[Peeweelinux] edit fstab doesn't 'stick'

[Mark Meade]

jim barchuk wrote:

> This has got to be some system design philosophical thing that I don't
> understand. Pwl has no idea what devices the target system has.

True, but Pwl *does* know how your target file system is configured, and the various mount
points.  It knows what devices your target has (/dev/fd0, /dev/ram, etc), the file system
in question (ext2, FAT, etc), and where the various directories are mounted (/, /home,
etc).

> Why would it overwrite what -I- tell it it has?

For power users, this feature can be disabled:  After some poking around in the
Embedded_Build/scripts directory, it looks like there is a script called "pwl_defaults"
that you could run, and turn off the option ("Modify System Boot Files") that causes fstab
to be created.

> I think I'm misunderstanding what 'target' means. I'm making a boot floppy
> for a box that has several hds.  For me the floppy is a transition/boot
> device. Pwl is unclear at several points what target means for it.

Here's the philosophical part - to me, "target" implies an embedded system -- and not a
floppy that boots Linux on a system with multiple hard drives.  This isn't to say the PWL
is inapproriate for your particular application; just keep in mind that embedded systems
<usually> don't include large hard drives.

In fact, I would argue that PWL does in fact "know" about the target system -- it knows it
has a boot (target) device, and some RAM.  The biggest problem I've seen thus far was
touched on earlier in this list -- how to configure a flash target with multiple
partitions.

>From your initial posts, I recall that you are trying to install Redhat via the LAN.
Wouldn't it be easier to use one of the various Redhat boot floppy images designed for
that purpose?  These images will probably have kernels that know all about hard drives,
network cards, and ext2/fat16 partitions.

Disclaimer: I realize that the "easiest" way isn't necessarily the most *fun* or
*educational* way ;-).

> Related to fstab, what do I need to include to read fat16 and extended?
> Pwl fdisk -identifies- a partition but mount says it can't deal with them.

You'll need to have fat16 and ext2 support either compiled into the kernel, or included as
modules. If you're using the standard pwl kernel, you'll need to include the corresponding
modules under "kernel-basic-2.2.17".

Regards,

Mark