Microdrive 0.2

Microdrive is basically a set of scripts which you can use to make your own live linux cd. It depends on busybox, isolinux and linux of course. I am planning to build a small bunch of diskless, monitorless, keyboardless nodes to do my rendering work [3D]. For them to run, I have various options but live cd seem to be most trouble free. But then I couldnt find a live cd, that more or less faithfully follows a ordinary installed linux system. They seem to use squashfs or unionfs or some other form of pseudo writable file systems. I couldnt even get the slax to show me a screen. I am sure it is to do with my laptop graphics card. But it sort of inspired me to make my own live cd, so I can match the components to the same library versions of my installed systems. To this end instead of making a single cd, I broke the work needed in to a set of scripts so that the whole thing is manageable and reusable. Hopefully it will be useful to someone else out there. To make a live cd : 1. Get the Microdrive Linux Live script set from above. 2. Untar the files to a directory. 3. Make a kernel appropriate for live cd. needs initrd, ramdisk and ext2 preferably also support basic devices as below. [ cd, devfs, framebuffer, vesa etc ] No hard and fast rules. Afterall its your damn cd! 4. Copy the kernel to ./src/bzImage . 5. Download busybox source tarball and put it in ./src . 6. Download syslinux source tarball and put it in ./src . 7. Run the scripts listed in ./scripts directory. [ Please note. Dont cd in to scripts directory. Rather run them as ./scripts/SCRIPT_NAME . All the scripts assume that they are working from directory where ./src and ./scripts ./doc etc are the sub directories.] 8. The purpose of scripts [ At first run them in this order as well ] : ./scripts/make-prelim-dirs : This will make all the necessary directories such as itree - where the initrd image will be made. cdtree - whatever is here will endup on cd. cdtree/zz - whatever other software you want to install, install it here. Also /etc/rc.d/links on the live cd will link lib, usr, etc, etc/X11/* from here to the live system during runtime. cdtree/isolinux - where the initrd.img, isolinux end up. ./scripts/build-busybox : This will build and install busybox in to itree. Will also chmod u+s the busybox library. ./scripts/build-isolinux : Well, guess what. ./scripts/find-libs : After installing the busybox binaries, you will ofcourse need the libraries i:e; libc, libm, ld-so etc. Well, this does exactly that. It cannibalises them from your host system. ./scripts/install-base : This will install a basic /itree/etc to go in to initrd.img. You can customize the actions there to your hearts content. ./scripts/update-itree : As root, this will ldconfig the libs in itree. Then chroots to the itree. You should get a shell. If it doesnt work here, it aint gonna work on the cd. ./scripts/make-initrd : You need to run this as root. Please read the script before reaching out for the "su" . It will create a initrd.img from itree/ and puts it in cdtree/isolinux/ . This is what the kernel from live cd loads and feels content that it has a root file system. ./scripts/make-iso : Finally ! . Make a iso9660 bootable image to burn to cd or cdrw. 9. In other words : ./scripts/make-prelim-dirs ./scripts/build-busybox ./scripts/build-isolinux ./scripts/find-libs ./scripts/install-base ./scripts/update-itree [ as root ] ./scripts/make-initrd [ as root ] ./scripts/make-iso Whats New in This Release: - Updated for the new kernel. - No devfs now.. Get Octavia music description language at SourceForge.net. Fast, secure and free downloads from the largest Open Source applications and software directory. Octavia is a music description language that reads a text file and converts to midi. It also provides the full power of python interpreter.

Requirements:	No special requirements
Platforms:	Linux
Keyword:	Cd,  Linux,  Live,  Live Cd,  Make Your Own,  Microdrive,  Other,  Own,  Scripts,  System,  To Make,  Your Own
Users rating:	0/10