Syslinux - Jan 2002 - Thanks Peter

Dear Peter,

first: thanks for the very prompt reply,

I am not sure I would like to download 
400+ meg file on my 56k modem though. 
Can that CD be purchased on line?

Maybe some background here is needed:
 
I am using SuSE Linux 6.4 and dual booting 
with windows 95 using LILO. I have found 
SuSE to be the easiest to mod so I would 
rather work with those files. 

There are quite large differences between 
Red Hat and SuSE as I am sure you know. 

I have about 2 years worth of major 
customised changes so my feelings are that 
I need to create this CD rather that try 
using one based on Red Hat. 

I need to gain a complete full understanding 
of the install from scratch using
syslinux -> initrd and how/if the CD can be 
mounted as, say, a mirror of my /root
partition. 

Do you happen to know of any good books that 
cover this in high detail?

How for example did people use/setup Linux 
before the Red Hat days?

Anyway again thanks for your help,

Regards,
James

James Alan Brown wrote:
> Dear Peter,
> 
> first: thanks for the very prompt reply,
> 
> I am not sure I would like to download 
> 400+ meg file on my 56k modem though. 
> Can that CD be purchased on line?
> 

No, sorry, I'm not in the CD publishing and fulfillment business; so far
noone seems to have expressed interest in publishing in.

You probably can get away with just downloading the "buildtree"
tarball,
though.
> Do you happen to know of any good books that 
> cover this in high detail?
> 
> How for example did people use/setup Linux 
> before the Red Hat days?

This is a huge topic and definitely not appropriate for this mailing list.

There are two ways you can do this, in practice:

a) Compile your kernel with ide-scsi (*no* ide-cdrom) and set /dev/sr0 as
the root device.  This will work for SCSI, USB and (via ide-scsi) ATAPI
CD-ROM drives.

b) Use an initrd (in v2.5 or patched v2.4 kernels, initramfs) to prod
around the system looking for a CD-ROM and then mount it.  This is a bit
more flexible than (a), especially you don't have to mount the CD as /
(the SuperRescue disk mounts the CD as /usr and uses a ramfs as /), but
requires you to build the requisite initrd.

I recommend (b), but it's definitely more work.

	-hpa