hello knoppix community,

i need your advice in a project for my company. i don't kow if it will actually work so i need you feedback before i start to do anything.

the situation is as following:

i need a small linux version with arround 20 mbyte or less for a special linux pc diagnostic environment in our pc factory. currently all is done by dos and a 1,44mb floppy. the client start from that bootfloppy log into our testservers (a novell server) and run severall batch-skripts to start a dos pc diagnostic program. the problem which is came up that dos support for most pc components like sound cards, network cards, mainboard chipsets etc is running out. the aftereffect of this problem is that we have no driver support for most actual pc hardware and we can't test our new build/factured pc's.

i got the idea to transfer the whole diagnostic from a dos environment to a linux environment. there are pc disgnostic programm's for linux but we need a basic linux detect the whole hardware and load all neccesesary drivers for each pc. the knoppix hardware for detection is fantastic.

1.)
is there a way to merge knoppix down to a bunch of some mbyte's to get it on a small usbstick with full driver support like on a knoppix 3.7 live cd? i do not need any xwindow system or any user application. just a nice kernel and huge driver support?

2.)
can i load the knoppix image via a dos with loadlin.exe from a server ? (the networkconnection is established via dos in this case)


there are a lot of work to do but my knwoledge in linux is not as quarter as good.
thanks a lot for your answers! ideas and suggestions welcome !

best regards, tobias (germany)