From: H.J. Lu (hlu@eecs.wsu.edu)
Date: 09/25/92


From: hlu@eecs.wsu.edu (H.J. Lu)
Subject: New 5.25" bootable root disk is on tsx-11
Date: 25 Sep 1992 16:04:54 GMT

As I promised, I have put new 5.25" bootable root disk on tsx-11 under
pub/linux/GCC/rootdisk. Please check them out.

I will try to update the kernel on the root disks with the latest from
Linus. Right now I am looking for a job. I don't know where/when I can
find one. I am not sure if I will be able to do what I have been doing
in the future. I will keep doing them until somebody takes over or I
no longer have access to Linux. BTW, does anyone know any openings?

H.J.

-- 
School of EECS                          Internet: hlu@eecs.wsu.edu
Washington State University             BITNET:   60935893@WSUVM1.BITNET
Pullman, WA 99164                       Phone:    (509) 335-6470 (O)
USA                                               (509) 334-6315 (H)
================README.rootdisk==========
These are bootable root disks for Linux. Kernel is 0.97 patch level 6
with Ted's one line fix for serial.c. There are some basic binaries on
root disks, all of which are linked with jump table 4.1. They are on
tsx-11.mit.edu under pub/linux/GCC/rootdisk.

This is a partial list of what are on root disks.

1. bash 1.12 2. gnu tar 1.10 (tar.Z) 3. compress 4.2.3 4. elvis 1.6 5. doshell, chmod, chown, cp, ls, mv, rm, and ln. 6. mount, umount, swapon 7. more 8. ps and free 9. mkfs, mkswap, fsck and fdisk

There are two versions of root disks, one, 3rootdisk.Z, for 1.44MB drive, the other, 5rootdisk.Z, for 1.2MB drive. Please do

1. uncompress [3|5]rootdisk.Z. 2. rawrite or dd it to a floppy disk. 3. boot that floppy disk.

If you want to use it to install Linux on your HD, you are on your own. Everything is there. But you have to know how to use them.

Since there is no enough room on a 5.25" floppy, I left out init, getty and login stuffs. After booting Linux off a 5.25" floppy, do

su doshell /dev/tty2 bash&

You will get another virtual console on /dev/tty2.

Suppose you want to install Linux on partition, /dev/hdxx, whose size is yyyy K bytes, you can use fdisk to find it out, you do

mkfs /dev/hdxx yyyyy mount /dev/hdxx /mnt cd /mnt mkdir bin cp /bin/tar.Z /mnt/bin chmod 755 /mnt/bin uncompress /mnt/bin/tar (cd /; /mnt/bin/tar cf - ./* ) | (cd /mnt; /mnt/bin/tar xvvf -)

You have to do these:

cd /lib cp libc.so.4.1 /mnt/lib cp libm.so.4.0 /mnt/lib

This will save some disk spaces since cp can make holes and tar can't. You now should edit /mnt/etc/fstab to make sure /dev/hdxx will be mounted as root. There are some examples in /mnt/etc/fstab. After that, do

cd /mnt/etc/lilo rm map boot.???? ./lilo -r /mnt -b /dev/hdxx -i boot.b -v -v -v /vmlinux

Now, you can boot Linux from your HD. To install the other stuffs should be very trivial now since you have tar and compress on your HD, and you can boot Linux off your HD. I suggest you get my bonuses come with jump table 4.1.

I will try to update my root disk regularly with Linus' new kernel.

This root disk works on my machine with 100MB IDE drive. I don't know anything about your machine or SCSI. Wish you good luck.

Correct me if I am wrong. Tell me about your story.

Thanks.

H.J. hlu@eecs.wsu.edu 09/25/09