LiveCD on Compact flash

[Junevicus, Lucius R CTR NAVFAC SE]

I have a LiveCD built using Kadischi and would like to move this to a CF
flash.
I've tried both syslinux and grub to boot up from the CF flash and get
to the same place with either method.  
Basically I see the initial splash screen, but it fails someplace in the
linuxrc scripts
I believe it has to do with the find_live_cd program not finding the
image on the flash drive.
I've tried changing the lines in the linuxrc from:

find-live-cd /cdrom

To

# find-live-cd /cdrom 
mount /dev/hda1 /cdrom

But have had no luck.  I guess the find-live-cd program searched the CD
devices for the images and mounts the one it finds to /cdrom.

This isn't working for me.

Any idea as to what I'm doing wrong?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Lucius.

[J. Hartline]

Junevicus, Lucius R CTR NAVFAC SE wrote:
> I have a LiveCD built using Kadischi and would like to move this to a 
> CF flash.
> I've tried both syslinux and grub to boot up from the CF flash and get 
> to the same place with either method.

I think the easier method is not to actually move the image to the flash 
card but to move the SquashFS image
and build a specialized initrd. I have done this with USB flash sticks 
already and I can provide you with the
linuxrc script I use if you wish.

What we do is mount the Squash image via loopback, and simply go on to 
pivot_root.
We don't use find-live-cd. Furthermore the rc scripts are slightly 
reworked. I did this creating my own SquashFS
image by hand however, not using Kadischi. It can be done in the same 
method as Kadischi however.

What I'd like to see is a Kadischi-USB fork to support installing to USB 
Flash devices.

J. Hartline

[Junevicus, Lucius R CTR NAVFAC SE]

I'd love to get a copy of your linuxrc script.

So to do this I'd move the Squashfs image to the flash drive.

How would I setup grub so it would know how to get to it?

Thanks again for the help, any other resources on how best to do this
would be great.

One problem I have is that if I get error messages during the boot
process, I cant scroll up to see what started it.

Is there a way of pausing the messages --maybee a sleep command?

Thanks again,
Lucius.

-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail]
[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Jasper
O'neal Hartline
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 10:38
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [Fedora-livecd-list] LiveCD on Compact flash

Junevicus, Lucius R CTR NAVFAC SE wrote:
> I have a LiveCD built using Kadischi and would like to move this to a 
> CF flash.
> I've tried both syslinux and grub to boot up from the CF flash and get
> to the same place with either method.

I think the easier method is not to actually move the image to the flash
card but to move the SquashFS image and build a specialized initrd. I
have done this with USB flash sticks already and I can provide you with
the linuxrc script I use if you wish.

What we do is mount the Squash image via loopback, and simply go on to
pivot_root.
We don't use find-live-cd. Furthermore the rc scripts are slightly
reworked. I did this creating my own SquashFS image by hand however, not
using Kadischi. It can be done in the same method as Kadischi however.

What I'd like to see is a Kadischi-USB fork to support installing to USB
Flash devices.

J. Hartline

--
Fedora-livecd-list mailing list
[e-mail]
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-livecd-list

[J. Hartline]

Junevicus, Lucius R CTR NAVFAC SE wrote:
> I'd love to get a copy of your linuxrc script.
>
> So to do this I'd move the Squashfs image to the flash drive.

This is what I've done to run LiveUSB Fedora Core..

Use yum's --installroot= to install some things kernel, mkinitrd, X.org 
Gnome Fluxbox all to a fake root.
After all your packages are installed, simply create as Kadischi would: 
/initrd, /liveusb/{moved,ramfs,tmpfs}, /liveusb/moved/var/lib/rpm
Move everything from /var/lib/rpm/* to /liveusb/moved/var/lib/rpm. tar 
up from the fake rootfs etc home media mnt opt var tmp root into
/liveusb/kadischi.tar and gzip it. rm -rf etc/* var/cache/yum/* (or yum 
clean all using the installroot) and Squash it.
(You can also rm -rf boot/* if you wish to save more space)
cd (fakeroot) ; mksquashfs . ../usbroot.squash -b 65536 leaves you with 
the usbroot.squash fakerootfs.
(This is going to be easier than trusting a CD worked image to run from 
a Flash card.)
Simply make your initrd now.
Here attached is the linuxrc script I use from the initrd which is a 
gzip'ed Ext2 image:
(attached)

Then create a directory: mkdir /tmp/usbroot
Move the Squashed image to /tmp/usbroot/
Make another directory: mkdir -p /tmp/usbroot/boot/grub
Place your kernel and modified initrd in /tmp/usbroot/boot
Then cp -R the /tmp/usbroot/* to the compact flash formatted Ext2 card's 
root.
Finally run grub-install, e.g. grub-install --root-directory 
/media/usbdrive /dev/sda
If your compact flash is mounted at /media/usbdrive for instance. This 
installs Grub's files and the
MBR for booting if you machine boots from USB or CF media.

You can see the simple trick is loading USB hub modules and mass storage 
modules during the initrd phase.
If it is neccessary any USB related questions should be taken care off 
off-list as this is the Kadischi/Fedora LiveCD list.

If you have more questions just ask.
J. Hartline

#!/bin/ash

#set -x
if [ "${INITRD_DBG}" = "x" ]; then set -x; fi

echo Mounted proc filesystem
mount -t proc /proc /proc

echo Mounting sysfs filesystem
mount -t sysfs none /sys
mount -t tmpfs none /tmp

cd /

#find-live-cd /cdrom

# Make kernel don't mount root fs
echo 0x100 > /proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev

echo "Mounting root filesystem"
modprobe loop
modprobe squashfs
modprobe ohci-hcd
modprobe uhci-hcd
modprobe ehci-hcd
modprobe usb-storage
modprobe scsi_mod
modprobe sd_mod
modprobe sg
sleep 12
mknod /dev/sda b 8 0
mknod /dev/sda1 b 8 1
mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /sysroot
mount -t squashfs -oloop,ro /sysroot/usbroot.squash /liveusb
sleep 5

echo "Doing the pivot_root"
cd /liveusb
pivot_root /liveusb /liveusb/initrd
cd /

umount /initrd/proc
umount /initrd/sys

#
# FIXME: make this work with udev
#

# Mount a (writeable) ramfs at dev and populate it with nodes:
mount -n -t ramfs initrd_dev /dev

cd /dev
for node in mem kmem null port zero core full ram ptmx tty pty shm cpu input agpgart dri cdrom console; do
    /initrd/sbin/MAKEDEV $node
done

# Mount pseudo-terminal fs at /dev/pts:
mkdir /dev/pts
mount -n -t devpts initrd_devpts /dev/pts

# readonly
echo "Setting up readonly-root"
/etc/rc.readonly linuxrc

# rc.readonly will umount both /initrd/tmp and /initrd

[Filip Tsachev]

Hello,

On 12/08/06, Jasper O'neal Hartline  wrote:
> If it is neccessary any USB related questions should be taken care off
> off-list as this is the Kadischi/Fedora LiveCD list.

Or make it simply "fedora-live" list. 8-)

[Chitlesh GOORAH]

On 9/7/06, Filip Tsachev  wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On 12/08/06, Jasper O'neal Hartline  wrote:
> > If it is neccessary any USB related questions should be taken care off
> > off-list as this is the Kadischi/Fedora LiveCD list.
> Or make it simply "fedora-live" list. 8-)

I see absolutely no damage if LiveUSB discussions are held here.

If Kadischi can be enhanced in one way or another, I see no trouble to
talk about liveUSB :)

Chitlesh