Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

> If you don't mind wasting about 300k on a firewall and a few
> other luxuries, you can just use the latest Slackware kernel.

Why bother, when I can use your 2.4.31 kernel and initrd?  Will that 
kernel not work with netpbm?  I don't think it had ppp support but we 
don't need to run a full-fledged BL on it.  The idea would be to edit 
photos (crop, rotate, shrink...) and replace the original larger files 
with smaller ones on the camera, not to go online with the camera.  We 
could do that with a regular 2-floppy BL.  Or the friend's Windows.

Is there any reason not to simply boot with syslinux to linux, and chroot 
instead of booting to DOS and then using loadlin and another initrd to 
boot to the camera?

> > Once you confirmed that,
> > you'd have to create and ext2 filesystem on the USB mass-storage device
> > and get a working BL install onto it.
>
> umsdos is also a (slow) possibility.
I tried that once.  It put about 30,000 (maybe only 3000) files into one 
of my DOS partitions and made it nearly impossible to defrag.

> > Maybe you could to that last step by
> > hooking up the camera to a computer where you have a BL install and
> > booting from David's floppy, then copying all the stuff from the BL
> > install over to the camera partition (cp -a is what you'd wanna use, I
> > think). Then, make a FreeDOS floppy and put loadlin and the kernel on it.
> > Next, get the initrd from the Runt distro (I can send you a copy, or post
> > one somewhere) and do surgery on it. Basically, you mount it as a loop
> > device under Linux and pull out the modules he's put in /lib and replace
> > them with copies of modules that match the kernel you wanna run. Or, if
> > you're brave and have the proper geek-factor, you can create your own
> > initrd from scratch: I've never done this, so can't give advice. Steven
> > and David have though, and could probably do so just as fast or faster
> > than it would take me to perform surgery on Runt's initrd.
>
> sindi has modified the initrd that I made for booting BL3 loop from
> a ZIP disk. So she should not have too much trouble with this.

I have not figured out syslinux yet.  Maybe there is some way to get a 
larger kernel into the 1-floppy USB storage boot disk that would accept 
more modules, put the slhc/ppp modules and zgv onto the camera.  Then if 
the computer we plugged into had a modem or DSL connection, we could 
connect to the internet via camera and email the photos with linux after 
editing them.  I learned how to plug into a DSL router via USB.  How would 
we use a DSL line from a USB camera, just run udhcpc and telnet (?) to the 
IP number?

> > Be aware that they advise against using flash media for OS installs, since
> > they measure the life of these things in (comparatively low) read-write
> > cycles and a running OS has to do alot of reading from and writing to the
> > disk.
>
> I thought that was the first generation of flash disks. I also thought that
> the limit only applied to writes, not reads. Anyway, if you modify BL3 a
> little bit, you can get it to boot into ro mode. And BL3 is so small that
> this should not be a concern.

Our flash disk is August 2005.  If we boot into ro mode, we can't edit the 
photos and put them back onto the camera.

I really ought to do taxes before making a linux camera.  A card reader 
camera might be a better idea, it does not need a power adaptor or 
batteries.  It does not take very good photos though.  We could carry 
both.

What else can you run linux on?

> David