live filesystems

**walterw** · 05-03-2003, 04:23 PM

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to make a version of RedHat (7.3 and above) run on a live cdrom or dvdrom? I have checked out this site and others exactly like it, but I have yet to produce similar results as the site advertises. The site is:

http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue54/nielsen.html
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Diskless-HOWTO-3.html

I tried CoolLinux and SuperRescue, but those OS's never ran on my machines. The only one that did was Knoppix, but that is Debian based and I am looking at holding to the RedHat standard.

Walter

**eadz** · 05-04-2003, 12:50 AM

Why Redhat?
You'll have to convert all the debian knoppix debs into rpms.

**walterw** · 05-04-2003, 03:08 PM

I was not looking at converting Knoppix, but starting from scratch and building RedHat 9.0 live from some sort of standard as to how the system should start. Would you happen to know of any documentation that could point me in the right direction?

Thanks,
Walter

**garyng** · 05-05-2003, 04:28 AM

mount the boot.img of KNOPPIX and have a look at the linuxrc in the miniroot.gz, also note the overall directory structure of it. That forms the basis of liveCD of KNOPPIX. For hardware detection see the /etc/rcS.d/S00* file after KNOPPIX has been booted.

**probono** · 05-05-2003, 07:12 AM

The bootable Linux distro "TAHDER" is based on RedHat 8.0 and is essentially an out-of-the-box installation of RedHat made to fit and work on the CD. Not really Knoppix, but based on Knoppix technology in part (cloop).

Homepage and Download:
http://pcxperience.org/TAHDER/

**walterw** · 05-05-2003, 06:08 PM

Thanks, I will try to find its source (without the cloop compression as it will be put on a DVD) I am still looking at starting from scratch with documentation. Does Knoppix have any general documentation for creating a live distro.

Thanks,
Walter

**Henk Poley** · 05-06-2003, 07:22 PM

Originally Posted by walterw

Thanks, I will try to find its source (without the cloop compression as it will be put on a DVD)

Why not? The compression actually speeds up the reading process (by a factor ~2.4, aka the compression ratio). And then you will be able to fit some 11GB of programs on the disk.

**walterw** · 05-06-2003, 08:54 PM

The reason to put it on a DVD is that I would have the installer (1.8 gb), rescue image (2.5 gb), and the rest for software and updates. The rescue image will be a full-feautured RedHat distribution similar to my hard drive install. In the future, I would compress the data either with cloop or zisofs to make it fit on a cdr, but to get started, I need the system to at least to work without all of those fancy features.

Walter

**Henk Poley** · 05-06-2003, 09:05 PM

Originally Posted by walterw

The reason to put it on a DVD is that I would have the installer (1.8 gb), rescue image (2.5 gb), and the rest for software and updates. The rescue image will be a full-feautured RedHat distribution similar to my hard drive install. In the future, I would compress the data either with cloop or zisofs to make it fit on a cdr, but to get started, I need the system to at least to work without all of those fancy features.

I get that, compressing 11 gigabytes is a timely business...

But you seemed determined not to compress it (never). Which seemed dumb to me.

**walterw** · 05-07-2003, 01:45 AM

What compression scheme is more efficient in your mind and why?

I just got SuperRescue working on my box. It is much slower compared to Knoppix, how does Klaus boot the thing so quickly? Knoppix boots just as fast as my harddrive install (RedHat 9.0). How different is Debian in the way things are run, I may consider running Debian from now on.

Walter