Ticket #3: bootdisk.2.xml

<sect1 id="postlfs-config-bootdisk">
<?dbhtml filename="bootdisk.html" dir="postlfs"?>
<title>Creating a custom bootdisk</title>

<para>How to create a decent bootdisk</para>
<para>The intent here is to create a "rescue bootdisk" that will load
enough 'linux' to enable you to do rescue operations.  With what is presented here 
you will be able to do file manipulation, mounting and unmounting, and other tasks.
This however is not the limit.  The minimal disk is described here, and you can 
add anything you can fit on the floppy.</para>
<para>
Boot disk/Rescue Disk
</para>
<para>
First we will create a loopback file to build our rescue disk image on, next
we'll make a file system on the image file, then we'll use 'mount' to mount 
the file as a regular disk, allowing us to read and write files from the loopback file.
The following commands will build us a 4 MB image.
<para>
<screen><userinput>dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/rfloppy bs=1k count=4096 &&
mke2fs -m 0 -N 2000 /tmp/rfloppy &&
mount -o loop /tmp/rfloppy /mnt/loop1 &&
rmdir /mnt/loop1/lost+found/</userinput></screen>
</para>
</para>
<para>
Now that we have a file mounted and useable, let's prepare it to be 
filled with useful material.  Since this is only a rescue floppy we'll 
only need to set up the minimum directories.</para>
<para><screen><userinput>mkdir /mnt/loop1/{dev,proc,etc,sbin,bin,lib,mnt,usr,var}</userinput></screen></para>
<para>Next, we will set up the device files.  I use devfs on my system, so 
the following command works well, as I only have the devices I use
anyway.  If you used MAKEDEV to create your devices, you'll want to
trim the /mnt/loop1/dev directory to reclaim the inode space wasted 
by all of the devices in the dev directory you don't use.</para>
<para><screen><userinput>cp -dpR /dev/* /mnt/loop1/dev</userinput></screen></para>
<para>Now to tend to the /etc directory.  To start, all we will do is use 
the passwd and group file that worked for our static chroot environment 
when we built LFS.  We'll also copy the startup scripts over and a few other files 
that serve well as starting points.</para>
<para><screen><userinput>cp -ax /etc/rc* /mnt/loop1/etc
cp -ax /etc/fstab /mnt/loop1/etc
echo "root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash" > /mnt/loop1/etc/passwd
cat > /mnt/loop1/etc/group << "EOF"
root:x:0:
bin:x:1:
sys:x:2:
kmem:x:3:
tty:x:4:
tape:x:5:
daemon:x:6:
floppy:x:7:
disk:x:8:
lp:x:9:
dialout:x:10:
audio:x:11:
EOF</userinput></screen>
</para>
<para>

To prevent automatic mounting of hard drive partitions, 
make sure to add the noauto option in their fstab entry.  Also, add the 
following entries to the /mnt/loop1/etc/fstab to assist with mounting our 
floppy and the ram image</para>
<para><screen>/dev/ram0       /               ext2    defaults
/dev/fd0        /               ext2    defaults</screen></para>

<para>Next, we will install busybox onto the image.  Busybox incorporates many of the *nix functions
into a single small executable file.  <link>Busybox can be found at http://www.busybox.net/downloads/busybox-0.60.3.tar.bz2</link>
<screen><userinput>
tar -xzvf busybox-0.60.3.tar.gz
cd busybox-0.60.3
make &&
make PREFIX=/mnt/loop1 install
</userinput></screen>
</para>

<screen><userinput>
cp -ax /var/utmp /mnt/loop1/var
mkdir /mnt/loop1/var/log
</userinput></screen>
<para>
Also, keeping in mind your space limitations, copy any other binaries and libraries you 
need to the image.  Use the <userinput>ldd</userinput> command to 
see which libraries you will need to copy over for any executables.
</para>
<para>
Now, since I use devfs to create devices on the fly and free up precious
inodes on the floppy, we'll also install devfsd to facilitate the
devices that busybox expects to find.

<screen><userinput>
mv GNUmakefile Makefile
make
make PREFIX=/mnt/loop1 install
cp /lib/libc.so.6 /lib/ld-linux.so.2 /lib/libld.so.2 /tmp
strip --strip-deb /tmp/ld-linux.so.2 /tmp/libc.so.6 /tmp/libld.so.2
mv /tmp/ld-linux.so.2 /tmp/libc.so.6 /tmp/libld.so.2 /mnt/lib/  
</para>
<para>
We will also need to set up an rc script to handle the devfsd startup.
Put this in <filename>/mnt/loop1/etc/init.d/rcS</filename>
<screen>
#!/bin/sh
mount -t devfs devfs /dev
/sbin/devfsd /dev
</screen>

<para>
Next create your compressed root filesystem.  We use -9 with gzip to make the smallest possible 
compressed image.
<screen><userinput>
umount /mnt/loop1 && dd if=/tmp/rfloppy bs=1k | gzip -v9 > rootfs.gz
</userinput></screen>  
<screen><userinput>ls -l rootfs.gz</userinput></screen> to make sure it will fit on the diskette.
</para>
<para>
make a custom kernel that is optimized for size.  Include only those features
you will need to rescue your system.  no sense in building in support for things
like xfree86 dri, etc, as most rescues are performed from the command prompt.

<screen><userinput>dd if=rescueimg of=/dev/floppy/0 bs=1k</userinput>
        429+1 records in
        429+1 records out
<userinput>rdev /dev/floppy/0 /dev/floppy/0</userinput>
<userinput>rdev -R /dev/floppy/0 0</userinput>
</screen>
In this example the rescueimage(KERNEL) was 353+1 blocks in size.  We will remember this 
for the next command.  We now write the root file system right after the kernel on the floppy.
by doing 16384+429+1= 16814
<screen><userinput>rdev -r /dev/floppy/0 16738</userinput></screen>
</para>
<para>
<screen><userinput>dd if=rootfs.gz of=/dev/floppy/0 bs=1k seek=430</userinput></screen>
In this command we use seek to find the end of the kernel  (429+1) and write the root file system to the floppy.
</para>
</sect1>