making a current install of mandrake into a boot cd

[cannedmushrooms]

How could I take the server at work running mandrake and make it into a bootable cd?

[Gozar]

First of all. Make sure you really want to do do this. I spend 2 weeks (14 days) in trial and error, until i got it working. Secundley even if you follow those steps, you might not succed first time. Be prepared to spend time wondering why it don't work.

If you are still up to it, have fun. I know i did, when i got it right.

I have been told that mandrake are not so different from Redhat, so..

I did this with RedHat version 8, for a school project. where we wantet to make a firewall running on a cd-rom. Some of the following are rufley copyed and translated from my danish sa (i think it's called in english) and translated to english.

Here the roufley guide of how i got RH 8.0 on a bootable cd.
Thanks to the knoppix net distrubtion, to sort of show me how it's done



When you have your system just like you want it. Boot on a rescue disk.
Mount your partition / partitiosions. Then make a directory to contain your currend installetion.

I maid the directory /hdimg and used rsync to copy all the files to /hdimg

rsync -av --exclude /hdimg / /hdimg

Then chroot into /hdimg You don't want to damage your current working installetion.

Now you have to find the start up script who are resposebill for starting all the services. exaime the file /etc/inittab for a line who looks like this:
si::sysinit:/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

it is the script /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit you have to modify.
You can chooice to put the commands into this file or call another script through rc.sysinit. I used the last option.

On redhat, the rc.sysinit script there are a line like this:

# Rerun ourselves through initlog
if [ -z "$IN_INITLOG" -a -x /sbin/initlog ]; then
    exec /sbin/initlog $INITLOG_ARGS -r /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
fi

You have to place your script after this(or commands) if this line exist, otherwice they will be run twice, witch can do some wired things. I ended up with a 4 TB ramdrive, even through the computer only had 128 mb memory (well at last df -h said it was 4 TB)

Right after those lines i inserted the following into the file

# Kør custum script
if [ -f /etc/rc.d/custum ]; then
    . /etc/rc.d/custum
fi

created the file /etc/rc.d/custum

this file lookes somthing like this:

#!/bin/bash
#Custum boot cd redhat script

#Export global variables
export PATH=/bin:/sbin

#Format ramdrive
mke2fs -vvv /dev/ram1

#mount ram drive
mount -n -t ext2 /dev/ram1 /ramdev

#creates the file /etc/mtab and link it to 
mkdir /ramdev/etc
touch /ramdev/etc/mtab

#creates div directoryes.
mkdir /ramdev/var
mkdir /ramdev/var/run
mkdir /ramdev/var/lock
mkdir /ramdev/var/lock/subsys
mkdir /ramdev/var/utmp

#Create tep
mkdir /ramdev/tmp

#Create empty log files
mkdir /ramdev/var/log
mkdir /ramdev/var/log/vbox
touch /ramdev/var/log/boot.log
touch /ramdev/var/log/cron
touch /ramdev/var/log/dmesg
touch /ramdev/var/log/ksyms.0
touch /ramdev/var/log/lastlog
touch /ramdev/var/log/maillog
touch /ramdev/var/log/messages
touch /ramdev/var/log/rpmpkgs
touch /ramdev/secure
touch /ramdev/spooler
touch /ramdev/wtmp

make sure to make the file executeable

I altered the file /etc/fstab
The first line should be where / gets mountet. i altered this line so it looks like this:

/dev/root.old           /                       ext3    defaults        0 0

Then delete the file /etc/mtab and create a synlink to /proc mounts

 ln -s /proc/mounts /etc/mtab

and then delete /var/log and var/run

At this point i exited chroot and created my own kernel-2.4.23
I maid sure that ext3, iso9660 was compiled in the kernel (not as modules)
Also ramdrive support, and set it to dafult size of 8Mb. And maked sure that initial ramdisk (initrd) also was compiled into the kernel.
Else i i maid as mutch as possebil as modules

I then graped the cloop source code from
http://developer.linuxtag.net/knoppi..._2.00-1.tar.gz
And compiled it for my kernel

I then created the initrd filesystem

dd if=/dev/zero of=./initrd bs=M count=3000

Format it with ext2 file system

mke2fs ./miniroot

Mount it

mount -o loop /miniroot /mnt/floppy

I then created the following on the initrd image:

mkdir system ramdrv modules static loop mnt mnt/floppt mnt/cdrom 
ln -s system/bin/
ln -s system/etc/
ln -s system/lib/
ln -s system/sbin/
ln -s system/usr/
ln -s ramdev/tmp
ln -s ../ramdrev/var/run
ln -s ../ramdrev/var/lock
ln -s ../ramdrev/var/log
ln -s ../ramdrev/var/tmp
ln -s ../ramdrev/var/utmp
cp -dpR /dev/* ./dev/
cp ~/cloop-2.00/cloop.o ./modules/

I then graped busybox source code from:
://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.00-pre3.tar.bz2
Make sure you chooce build BusyBox as a static binary
under build options.

Then all you need to compile in is (i think) mount, ash, insmod
If you build it in the default directory _install
copy the contencs of this directory to the bin directory on the initrd image

Then create the file linuxrc in the root of the initrd image.
This file looks like this:

#!/bin/ash
## DD 5-12-2003
#Start af initrd

#Export parth
export PATH=/bin:/sbin:

#mounter proc
mount -t proc proc /proc

#mount cd note change this to where your cd drive is!!!!
mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdb /loop

#indlæser cloop.o modulet i kernen og peger på filen /loop/cd
insmod /modules/cloop.o file=/loop/cdfs

#mounter compressed fs
mount -t iso9660 -o ro /dev/cloop /system

#Switch troot device
echo "0x100" > /proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev

exit 0

allso make sure to make this script executeable

Then unmount the initrd image and crompress it with gzip

Then i created a 2.88 floppy image to be sure everything could fit on the image.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/boot.img bs=M count=2880

format it with msdos fs

mkfs.msdos /boot.img

Then grap syslinux from
http://freshmeat.net/redir/syslinux/...x-2.07.tar.bz2
and run

syslinux -s ./boot.img

Make sure the switsh -s is there, otherwise the final cd might not be combatibel with your bios and won't boot!
mount the floppy

msdos -o loop /boot.img /mnt/floppy

and copy the nessary files on the floppy image

cp /usr/src/linux-2.4.23/arch/i386/boot/bzImage /miniroot.gz /root/syslinux-2.07/ldlinux.sys /mnt/floppy

Create the file syslinux.cfg on the root of the floppy
And this file contains

DEFAULT bzImage
APPEND ramdisk_size=100000 initrd=miniroot.gz

LABEL linux
KERNEL bzImage
APPEND ramdisk_size=100000 initrd=miniroot.gz

PROMPT 1

Unmount the floppy image.

I maid the following directoryes to contain my actual cd image
/bootcd and /bootcd /boot
Copyed boot.img to /bootcd/boot

now create the compressed file system with

mkisofs -pad -no-bak -J -R | /root/cloop-2.00/create_compressed_fs - 65536 > /bootcd/cdfs

and to the final cd who can be burned

cd /bootcd
mkisofs -pad -J -R -b /boot/boot.img -c /boot/boot.cat -o /redhat_boot_cd.iso ./

Have fun

Sincerley
Gozar

[bfree]

Though I haven't used it you could look at http://www.linuxminicd.org/mklivecd/ if the server is running Mandrake 9.2+

[SUOrangeman]

Does the current MandrakeMove offer any of the functionality you seek in a boot CD?

-SUO