Remastering - syslinux/boot.img file

[freeballer]

I've been reading the remastering guide I could find on the internet but could not find howto add/change the boot.img file adding extra boot options via syslinux.cfg to add memdisk and new options for booting memtest86, fujitsu,maxtor,etc.. (hd diagnostics), windows bootdisks (win95->) and dban to make it a little more like a "admin/repair toolkit" and completely eliminate my floppy collection.
The problem is I have a couple of stupid questions from a relative newbie to linux.
I know howto mount the img file through "-o loop". Is there either a way to mount it rw or how do I re-image the "boot.img" file properly as either 1.4mb or 2.88mb floppy?
dd? Or do I need a floppy disk to (re)create the image again?

do I need to edit the syslinux.cfg file with vi, kate? Does it matter?

And does anybody who has done this already have any other pointers??

[arkaine23]

mount -o loop boot.img tmp
cd tmp
cp syslinux.cfg ..
vi ../syslinux.cfg
mv ../syslinux.cfg .


Basically what all of that says is mount the loop as you have been doing. Copy the file youi want to edit outside of the mounted loop. Edit the copy that's outside of the loop (with any text editor you like), then mv it back into the mounted loop and overwrite the original file.

[Bernd Blaauw]

Arkaine,

reading from your post I need
1 diskette for boot.img (cannot write on a readonly boot.img on cd after all),
then mount it.
Changing syslinux.cfg is easy.
Mounting miniroot is also something I learned, as well as editing the files in there.

What I could NOT find, is how to recreate the miniroot.gz
any details on that?

I still have to check if Knoppix now has the FROMDVD cheat..I need it so it won't try to copy an entire DVD in 800MB ramdisk..

succeeded in writing Knoppix 3.4 C'T edition to DVD, so it boots a lot faster!

any help appreciated on the miniroot.gz thing.

[arkaine23]

It helps if you have some ext3 hard drive space to do this stuff on.

If you're playing with 3.4 Cebit edition, then you should know that it uses isolinux instead of syslinux, though thje syslinux boot.img is still there. You'll find isolinux in a directory on the cd called boot/isolinux. It's easier to deal with (all the files are not writeable but you can just chmod +w them if you copy them to a linux filesystem on a hard drive), and its what allows for you to choose the 2.4 or 2.6 kernel (because there's more space to work with and the 2.6 kernel image is big, and you got to have space for two miniroot.gz's). So using syslinux on 3.4 Cebit will only give you one kernel, while using isolinux will give you two kernels.

Here's info about about miniroot.gz, from the custom kernel how to document in the docs section of this site:

Now for the fun part: 'mount boot.img boot -t msdos -o loop=/dev/loop0' will mount the boot floppy in the boot folder. Next, 'cp boot/miniroot.gz .', 'gunzip miniroot.gz', and 'mount miniroot mroot -t ext2 -o loop=/dev/loop1'.

There's also lots of good info about how to remaster using isolinux in that document.