[Rule-list] New installer / bootdisk

[Devon]

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Hi all,

First off, is anyone still out there? ;)

I've been playing around with the boot disk idea.

I managed to script an install using a custom bootdisk containing the 
kernel and filesystem, plus one additional disk containing the rpm binary.
Currently, the installer will install a base system only. I'm working on 
adding additional scripts to add networking support, openssh, etc.

At present, you do have to run fdisk or cfdisk manually, as well as 
mkswap and mke2fs. (mke2fs -j -L /boot /dev/hda2 for example, to create 
an ext3 filesystem on /dev/hda2 with a filesystem label of /boot)
The above commands are available from within the installer.

Do not turn on swap or mount the partitions, the script will handle that.

I had no problem at all installing in 8M of RAM in less than an hour. In 
fact, the longest install was under 45 minutes.

If you want to try it out:
http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/rule/miniconda-V0.1.0.img
and
http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/rule/rpm.gz

use dd if=miniconda-V0.0.9.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=1440k to make the boot disk.
The second disk can be made by doing mke2fs -m 0 /dev/fd0, then mount the 
floppy and copy rpm.gz onto the disk. You'll be prompted for the second 
disk during install.

After booting, the install script is in /scripts/setup.sh
It assumes partitions of:
hda1 == swap
hda2 == /boot
hda3 == /

If you don't want those partitions, you need to edit the scripts and 
config files in the scripts directory.

(I plan on adding the ability to use /dev/hdb, etc. later. For now, I'd 
like to know how this works, and if it appears to be a viable option.)

It isn't complete, I still need to add scripting to install grub or lilo. 

The script will print out commands to install grub or lilo, as well as 
directions for exiting the chroot environment and rebooting cleanly. I've 
had no end of difficulty getting grub to install and boot. Sometimes it 
works, sometimes it doesn't. Not sure what I am doing wrong. 
For now, I'd suggest using lilo, as rebooting with the boot disk, 
mounting the drives, and installing lilo has always worked when I 
couldn't get grub to cooperate.

If you can't reboot, there is hope. The handy install disk doubles as an 
emergency boot/root disk. :)

Please try it out, and let me know how it goes?

- -D

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pgp key:  http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/pgpkey.txt

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