Question about remote ext2 filesystem support in pwlconfig...

[Rich Riendeau]

I have a ruggedized 386sx with built-in 85MB Harddisk, ethernet - but no
CDROM or standard IDE bus. I have gotten peewee linux to work by doing a
manual install of the filesystem from a network-live boot disk and used
lilo to get the machine to boot from it's internal hard disk.

One of the means I was trying to use before I went manual was to use a
loopback mounted file with a filesystem created in it. i.e.:

dd if=/dev/zero of=PARTITION bs=1024 count=3096  # Create a 32 Meg partition
mke2fs PARTITION						 # Create a ext2 partition on the file
mkdir pmnt
mount -o loop PARTITION					 # Mount it to ensure all is ok
umount pmnt

At this point I am not allowed to access this file as /directory/PARTITION
as if
I would access /dev/hda because the scripts make sure that the file is a
special
device (which it isn't).

Is this path at all feasible? My ultimate intention is to be able to prepare
the
filesystem with pwlconfig and "burn" it to the file PARTITION and then boot
from a
floppy on my destination machine and use something like tftp and dd to load
it onto a
32MB partition on the remote computers harddisk...

Comments?

-Rich Riendeau


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-peeweelinux@adis.on.ca
> [mailto:owner-peeweelinux@adis.on.ca]On Behalf Of Adi Linden
> Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2001 10:59 AM
> To: Ralph Stickley
> Cc: peeweelinux@adis.on.ca
> Subject: Re: PeeWee: Installing Lilo.....failed
>
>
> Hi Ralph,
>
> The pwl_target scripts creates a log file in Embedded_Build/tmp/rd.log  I
> plan on an option to view this file from within pwlconfig if the target
> load failed... Yup, another one to add to the todo list.
>
> Some important items on the todo list:
>
> - proper handling of custom files with embedded spaces
> - add xterm-color to termcap
> - pwl_kernel development
> - new 2.2.17 kernel w/pwl_kernel_functions and icmp masq
> - single partition target for dualboot applications
>   - with instructions for manual lilo.conf manipulation
>
> Some enhancements:
>
> - 2.2.18 kernel
> - 2.4.x kernel
>   - devfs
>   - reiserfs and/or ext3
> - example/starter configuration with busybox/tinylogin
>
> And still... Documentation...!!! I want to get a FAQ started since there
> are a lot of questions and answers in the list archives.
>
> Anything I missed?
>
> TTYL,
> Adi

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