[Peeweelinux] Fits on a floppy?

Barry Gershenfeld [email protected]
Wed, 24 Jul 2002 16:33:57 -0700 (PDT)


I've been trying the "load system onto /dev/fd0" thing here and I
find that 
 (1) It's very nearly the size of the floppy
 (2) Sometimes it fits and sometimes it doesn't
 (3) There's "nothing" in the system.

"Nothing" means nothing beyond the basic boot-up necessities
plus a few programs in bin.  The difference between "it fits"
and "it doesn't fit" might even be accounted for by the luck
of the draw when the ramdisk is compressed.  The failed disks
tend to have everything except the syslinux file, which means
it got really close (or else the directory was written out
without the data actually fitting).  I should have said that
this is the same project each time (as far as I know--and that's
really the point).

But what I'm really wondering is whether I'm going about this
properly.  Has anyone built a floppy with more applications
on it?  Does anyone  write their image to a floppy?  Have I
got something big included (using the "minimal" project) that 
I've overlooked?

I should point out that I don't need my system to fit on a
floppy.  That was just an easy way to start.  I'm going to
use some form of flash disk.  So I don't need any advice
on tricks to make it fit.  I'm just looking for ways to
find out how this thing works, trying to catch any miscon-
ceptions early on.

So far, I like what I see.   I really would like to learn
how it works.

Barry