[syslinux] Looking for info

[Martijn Bakker]

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