On Fri, Jan 25, 2002 at 08:14:42PM +0000, James Alan Brown
wrote:> Dear All,
Hi,
> This may at first seem a bit odd but I
> am hopping to find some info that I feel
> would help the Linux community as a whole.
that's always good :)
> With so many different flavours of Linux
> and with each distribution doing their own
> thing there doesn't seem to be any easy way
> to create a Linux install on a new virgin
> PC without committing oneself to a
> "Brand Name" (Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake
> Debian Slackware or other).
I can feel your problems :) No, serious, I have been
working on this too. it's hard.
> Each Brand has its good points as well
> as it bad points and it is not until you
> start writing C programs for Linux that
> you soon realise there exists a total screw
> up with RPM's added "dif files" that change
> the config of pure tar source files to
> suite the Brands likes/dislikes of the
> LSB (Linux Standard Base).
true. Debian does almost the same, and I guess
the rest does too.
> What I would like to do is to produce a
> bootable (Linux) CD that has a directory
> of tools to partition a new hard drive,
> format, probe your hardware, install a
> kernel,set up a base system with a Bash
> Shell and a C++ compiler. Giving the end
> user an easy way of building up a custom
> "Brand Free System".
what do you think you're building then? It's
still a brand but now it's your own one. And
you can't trust the end-user or maybe even the
sysadmin to have enough knowledge to build up
a linux-system from almost-scratch.
> I have looked hard on the net at mini-Linux/
> Linux from scratch corelinux and endless
> others but most seem to be so complex or
> require you to have some ones distribution
> already installed upon your system.
LFS was the best I found. But still it isn't
what you/we are looking for, I guess.
> I am hoping to produce something like the
> old MS DOS way where you booted up,
> partitioned, formatted and install the
> DOS shell (Bash for Linux) on 1 CD.
That's easy. MS-DOS had just a few competitors.
But there were enough shells to choose from,
and enough apps too. I don't think you can
compare DOS with Linux. times changed... :(
> I can see that syslinux is part of this key
> and indeed, is used by many of the big Linux
> brand names, do use syslinux to boot up a ram
> disk (initrd) at the start of the install.
>
> Can you boot up a Linux CD and mount it as
> /root with a directory structure containing
> tools and the needed header files?
I guess so. as long as you don't have to write
anywhere in that structure it should work just
fine.
> Can any of you give me info on any good
> books (Making a Linux Distribution)/ info
> files on how to set about this task?
LFS has the most docs about that I guess,
but yeah, like you said, it's complicated.
> Any good ideas on how to go about it would
> also be welcome.
Like I said, I'm also working on it :) I guess
I didn't help you much, but don't feel discouraged.
what you are trying to do is good, as long as it
doesn't give us *another* distro, for there are so
many already </understatement>.
grtz, Tijn
--
11:54PM up 10:40, 4 users, load averages: 0.16, 0.16, 0.16