DietLinux 

DietLinux is a distribution based on dietlibc. It contains a 2.6.x linux kernel, and will never support older kernels that do not support for devfs and tmpfs. The boot process is optimized for small size, the upcoming 0.2-release should be able to boot from cdrom, floppy or usb-stick on all systems with at least 8mb of RAM. General stuff With the upcoming 0.2-release the boot-process is the same for all media. I got rid of ramdisk images for the root filesystem completely, and shrinked the initrd-images to about 60k (uncompressed). A kernel can be used with the boot system if it has support for initrd, tmpfs and devfs. You need to configure the bootloader to give the kernel some bootparameters: init=/linuxrc We use linuxrc to set up some stuff. It will execle() init later root=/dev/ram0 The initrd is the final root. Though our linuxrc will change it. devfs=mount Only needed if you didnt tell the kernel at compile time to automatically mount devfs bootdevice=[] To come, hints for linuxrc from which device we booted Bootup, the initrd phase linuxrc, stage 1 The first part is handled in linuxrc. Its described here short for better understanding whats going on. * linuxrc gets started by the kernel. Besides linuxrc we have two directories in our ramdisk -- /dev with mounted devfs and /rootfs * linuxrc mounts a tmpfs at /rootfs * linuxrc creates basic directories in the rootfs (namely dev and initrd) * linuxrc chdirs to /rootfs, calls pivot_root and chdirs / chroots in the new root. After this we have the old contents of the initrd under /initrd * linuxrc remounts initrd/dev under /dev, and mounts /proc. With the dev remount weve put the open /dev/console file into the right filesystem. * linuxrc umounts /initrd with MNT_DETACH set. Most likely initrd will not unmounted immediately but when calling execle() to exec init For more details please consult the apkg sources. linuxrc, stage 2 Were now getting to the second stage, still powered by initrd. Thats the first stage you can influence without modifying the linuxrc-sources. * linuxrc creates all directories in the rootfs * linuxrc mounts procfs and sysfs * linuxrc inits the built-in packagesystem. This includes trying to find a (a dietlinux media must have a file called `dietlinux-media in its root) es well es the name of the initial package to load (from dietlinux-media) * linuxrc loads the initial package (the apkg package system) and execl()s apkg with param -t (starts bootstrap). Most likely /initrd gets freed here, so we have about 60k additional space from now on. apkg stage Now its apkgs turn to bootstrap a package set to the rootfs..

Requirements:	No special requirements
Platforms:	Linux
Keyword:	Based On,  Devfs,  Dietlinux,  Distribution,  Initrd,  Kernel,  Linux Distributions,  Root,  Stage,  System
Users rating:	0/10