Knoppix running from RAM: SUCCESS!! kind of...

It copies itself, and it boots up fine.. just no X :( I think it's probably because I removed one of the knoppix packages while on my mission to hack the size down. It also freezes up at some points.. but that's probably becuase it's only got about 56MB of ram to work with cause the other 200 are being taken up by the image :) (another reason why i'd really like to get my hands on that 48MB one with X... :D

Oh yeah.. alex, if you read this, does the morphix base package have X in it? cause I had started to download it, but then quit..

I've still got a bit of work to do on it, since right now the RAMSIZE is hardcoded in(got fed up statically compiling programs.. I think I'll see if I can make it a command line option).

Once I get something nice working, I'll be sure to post it up though!

Great news dvessey, nice hack! :D

Would love to hear how you did it! i got as far as using busybox to boot, but had some problems with it. Did include a kernelparameter to choose, but i ripped it out in 0.2 as i didn't get anywhere.

morphix base doesn't include X, yet. I did see some packages on that light Xvesa server, and it might be included (as i do have some kewl ideas on a bootscreen and moduleselector, and vesa seems to work most of the time). The smallest morphix iso online is -light (190 megs), but maybe an ultra-light version/module would be fun too, running in pure RAM :P

I might upload bareX tomorrow if you want, but it's not much (and it uses the regular X server, it's huge in comparison). just put ultra-light on my wishlist, so who knows :P

what is busybox anyway? I've heard it mentioned here a couple of times...

it's not really that complicated of a hack.. you need a statically compiled cp and mount(util-linux and sh-utils, respectively). I just put these into a directory of their own on the CD.

then you have to change some stuff in linuxrc from miniroot.. mainly putting the ramdisk creation ABOVE where is inserts the cloop module. set the ramsize to something statically and take out all the unnecessary stuff there. Then, before it inserts the module, copy the image onto the ramdisk, and make sure to tell the module that when you load it.

And that's all I did.. didn't change the cloop image except for ripping stuff out of it.

Hmm, already figured out that second part, just tried using busybox instead of staticly-compiled utils. it didnt work for some strange reason though

busybox is essentially a whole lot of commandline apps all stuffed into one. you execute commands by using busybox <command> or having a link with the name of the command, so you have a fully-functional shell in about 150kb. check out http://www.busybox.net/ for more info, don't know if it could be a good replacement...

I'll take another look at it tomorrow :P

by second part do you mean copying it onto the ramdisk? if so, I had run into a problem there as well.. for me, cause of so little ram and such a big image, it would only copy 127 MB of the image unless the ramdisk was mounted with the -o size=X option, which is what I needed the statically compiled mount for.

Well, i meant adapting linuxrc, having the ramdisk-building before mounting the cloop. it's true that the ash-mount doesn't have the size option, the busybox version did afaik. Oh well, i'll play around with it some more...

Alex... I looked through your FTP and could not seem to find the precombined images, nor the main-game package... I wanted to try it out, it sounds great...

Alex... I looked through your FTP and could not seem to find the precombined images, nor the main-game package... I wanted to try it out, it sounds great... Morphix sounds...well... fun if nothing else :D :D

Heh, it's almost as fun using it as it is making it :P

ftp://dl.xs4all.nl/pub/mirror/drupal/Morphix

should work. You almost have me a heart-attack (THEY'VE TEARED MY MIRROR DOWN! :D), as i don't know how much i'm entitled to upload to it. Then again, my isp rocks ;)

ftp://dl.xs4all.nl/pub/mirror/drupal...ameMod-0.2.iso is the direct link to the game mod.

Oh well, have fun. And i'm honored that even god has fun with morphix :P

(note that it doesn't load into ram yet, so if you where looking for that: tough bikkies, working on it ;))

just trying to get morphix to work to see what you have going... seems like a GREAT idea... I am willing to help in any way (remember i am a REAL noob...)

Well, doing what you are now is one of the ways to help!

I really really really (yes, really :D) appreciate feedback, critique or plain flaming. What do you think can get better? What would you use a liveCD (or any distro, for that matter) for? What just plain sucks? What did you have trouble with?

It's a new (and pre-mature, in this case) project, like most remastered versions here, but i think the users of a distro should turn the distro into what they want (or are content with). If i wanted a liveCD for myself i'd probably pop up one huge emacs window, but this isn't a liveCD for just myself. Even if you can't code or don't want to dive into the ugly details you can seriously help out any project: by pointing out the weakest points...

Oh, and if you want to flame, do it on the wiki at morphix.org. I like flaming back, but i don't think that the rest would appreciate it :P

Nice work, looking forward to the final result!
It would be great if this RAM option could be added to the Knoppix CD...

A KDE 3.1 version would be nice, that allows me to have my own /etc and /home as separate modules!

Hmm, a KDE-based module could be easily made, i'll see if i can get some testmodules up next week (i thought people already had enough KDE-versions of KNOPPIX, then again it wouldnt be much effort)

modules that load /etc and /home? well, could be a good idea, i'll see if i can get some scripts done that easily create minimodules. Should these be seperate modules, or a combined /etc+/home module? It's doable, placing it on the todo-list :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dvessey

It copies itself, and it boots up fine.. just no X :( I think it's probably because I removed one of the knoppix packages while on my mission to hack the size down. It also freezes up at some points.. but that's probably becuase it's only got about 56MB of ram to work with cause the other 200 are being taken up by the image :) (another reason why i'd really like to get my hands on that 48MB one with X... :D

Oh yeah.. alex, if you read this, does the morphix base package have X in it? cause I had started to download it, but then quit..

I've still got a bit of work to do on it, since right now the RAMSIZE is hardcoded in(got fed up statically compiling programs.. I think I'll see if I can make it a command line option).

Once I get something nice working, I'll be sure to post it up though!

---

Is there a download of your RAM Knoppix version?
I would like to use a distribution like this.
Or perhaps you could details on howto build such a distribution.

Any info appreciated.