CDROM Installation?

[Adi Linden]

Hi,

> So I don't waste my time downloading the entire PeeWeeLinux distribution I
> was wondering if there is a way to create a bootable PeeWeeLinux from a
> CDROM?  I'm assuming that this could be done by making the install and
> "Read-Only Root File System" type of installation.  If I am correct it
> would then place /var, /etc, /usr and /home in ramdisks.

Yes and no. A CDROM embedded system is planned for the future. There are 2
possible ways of doing this:

1. Load the entire filesystem from the CD into a ramdisk
2. Load the kernel and some ramdisks mount a read-only root on CD

Option 1 would be fine for a small system that just won't fit onto a
floppy.

Option 2 would be almost limitless. In fact a quite complete Linux system
can be run that way (done that a while back).

The current read-only root installation doesn't do the trick. It
partitions the target drive which is useless for a CD. Right now the
arrangement is as follows:

/               --> read-only on target drive
/dev & /var     --> compressed ramdisk loaded from /boot
/etc            --> compressed ramdisk loaded from /boot
/home & /root   --> partition copied into ram

A note to the above, /var is a symlink to /dev/var and /root is a symlink
to /home/root and /tmp is a symlink to /dev/var/tmp.

This could be modified to have a partition for /etc instead of a ramdisk.
This might make runtime configuration easier. But as you can see the /usr
partition is part of the read-only / partition just as /bin, /sbin, /lib
and all the other directories.

A CD-ROM system doesn't have the option of saving anything back to the
boot media. So all the ramdisk stuff including /home could be loaded from
compressed ramdisks on the root filesystem. Doing this kind of thing
wouldn't be too hard that's why I planned on doing it sometime soon.

I think /home and /root should be ramdisks for sure, except they could be
made really small if nothing really gets written to it ever. Some
applications like netscape complain if they don't find a writeable home
for the user.

Off hand I don't think the kernels currently included have iso9660 support
which would be rather essential for a CD-ROM system. Maybe the basic
kernel does as it was meant for rescue disks and such.

So for the short answer, PeeWeeLinux 0.51 doesn't have CD-ROM support out
of the box.

Hope this helps.

TTYL,
Adi

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