UNCLASSIFIED - RE: [Fedora-livecd-list] Kadischi & Alternative Filesystems...

[HAWKER, Dan (external)]

> I have been able to get the stuff inside squashfs.img to boot

> as initramfs. You need to have a good amount of ram to pull

> this off though...

>

> For example, the livced-minimal's initramfs is  ~265 MB

> uncompressed! (all this has to go into ram), so you would

> need 512 MB or more to boot just a minimal... I am not sure

> if there is a limit to how large an initramfs can be... I

> would think not... I hav been able to do this w/ 360 MB

> initramfs files.

>

<snip>
>

> The above commands get you an initrd.img (initramfs) and a vmlinuz
> (kernel) derived from a livecd that can be booted w/o need to

> mount a root from cd / network etc, provided that you have

> enough ram to support this.
>

> Also, if desirable, it should be easy to add a switch to

> livecd-creator to just build a kernel / (big) initramfs based livecd.
>

> Thanks,
>

> MFK

Thanks for the info and apologies for the delay in responding, I got
sidetracked on something else for a few days :)

Good to hear that you can use the squashfs image to create an initramfs.
After some playing about, I am now hacking around livecd-creator to
disable a few functions and add a few, so that rather than create an iso
of the final os.img file and the isolinux stuff, it just creates a big
initramfs file and the required /boot stuff. It works manually at the
moment (get livecd-creator to halt before creating the iso and
squashfs.img, then create the initramfs and edit files manually), its
just now a case of automating it.

Never played with Python before (and my general programming skills are
fairly rubbish), but this is a good excuse/project to make me learn
python, so am heading off that way (need to investigate creating cpio
images from within Python next).

Regarding the target, the custom distro I am building this for is less
than 100MB anyway, so the RAM requirements aren't so much of an issue
(distro is for embedded devices).

Thanks again

Dan

--

Dan Hawker
Linux System Administrator
Astrium
http://www.astrium.eads.net

--


This email (including any attachments) may contain confidential and/or privileged information or information otherwise protected from disclosure.
If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately, do not copy this message or any attachments and do not use it for any purpose or disclose its content to any person, but deleted this message and any attachments from your system. Astrium disclaims any and all liability if this email tranismission was virus corrupted, altered or falsified.
-----------------------------------
Astrium Limited, Registered in England and Wales No. 2449259
Registered Office: Gunnels Wood Road, Stevenage, Hertfordshire, SG1 2AS

This email (including any attachments) may contain confidential and/or privileged information or information otherwise protected from disclosure. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately, do not copy this message or any attachments and do not use it for any purpose or disclose its content to any person, but delete this message and any attachments from your system. Astrium disclaims any and all liability if this email transmission was virus corrupted, altered or falsified.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Astrium Limited, Registered in England and Wales No. 2449259
Registered Office: Gunnels Wood Road, Stevenage, Hertfordshire, SG1 2AS, England