[luau] HDD-less Linux

Fri Apr 26 22:11:25 PDT 2002

Heh, finally found a patch that makes it compile cleanly (I'm not really 
a C wizard or a linker wizard, but I'm learning! :) and compiled it and 
put it on the disk.

In it's current state you'll have to modify the config every time it 
boots up (it doesn't even have /etc/ppp on the ramdisk), but that 
shouldn't be too hard to fix.  The ramdisk is modifyable pretty easily, 
just take the rootfs.gz file off the floppy, uncompress, mount loopback 
(fs type is minix), modify to suit your needs, unmount, compress the 
image, put back on floppy, and lilo -r <mountpoint of floppy> to 
reinstall lilo on the floppy.  In the future I'll probably move to 
SYSLINUX on the floppies, but for now I'm using lilo.

I don't know how dial on demand works, if there is a special util you 
need to do it, feel free to tell me where I can get a source tarball and 
I'll see if I can't cram it on the floppy.

Of course the disk also has the full linux 2.4 packet filter on it, with 
all it's stateful glory :)  It also has full ipv6 support should you be 
so inclined.  You could even do a firewall on a bridge (like a PIX) with 
it, though that won't apply in this situation unless you want to get 
fancy with DMZs.

Minimum system requirements for this thing are about a 486/DX-25 (it 
MUST have an FPU, the kernel does not have FPU emulation to save space), 
16MB of RAM (and this is tight, if you are going to have lots of 
connections for the connection tracker to track, you'll need more RAM). 
  I'd probably reccomend at least a 486/DX-50 and 20-24MB of RAM for a 
minimum (remember, the ramdisk takes 4MB of your ram, 8MB systems 
probably won't be usable).

The disk image is at:
http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/~monmotha/hddlesslinux/lanwanrouter-1.0-2.img

To write it to a floppy, use dd: "dd if=file.img of=/dev/fd0"

Remember this is still in a fairly early form (which is why it's TOTALLY 
unconfigured), suitable for people comfortable with a little tinkering 
to get it to work.

Also keep in mind that it is a RAMDISK!  This means that if the power 
goes out, it reverts to the same state that it was when it booted up the 
last time.  In the future, I'll try to make it so that it updates the 
ramdisk image when it shuts down properly, but that can wait until later :-)

--MonMotha

Dustin Cross wrote:
> MonMotha,
> 
> Do you have PPP and dial-on-demand support on your floppy?  I need to set
> up a system to share a dial-up connection between 8 Windows PCs networked
> together (until our DSL gets installed in a few weeks).  I have a 486DX50
> or a 486DX4-100 to choose from and hopefully there are enough working parts
> to get one complete system.  I was looking at LRP, but I though I would ask
> about your floppy linux.
> 
> Dusty
> 
> 
> 
>>Current specs:
>>
>>Kernel: 2.4.19-pre6 (I've got another one on 2.4.19-pre7, but it's
>>proven to be a bit unstable), all the netfilter patches you can cram in
>>LibC: uClibc-0.9.11
>>IPtables: CVS as of about a week or so ago
>>Busybox 0.60.2
>>IPRoute2 (latest)
>>iputils (latest)
>>udhcp 0.9.6
>>
>>The kernel supports vlans, trunking (bonding), ethernet bridging, and
>>QoS.  The appropriate userspace utilities are also there.  It would
>>make  a great "demo disk" to show off what a linux firewall can do
>>(ever  wanted to download 5 ISOs and play UT with the same ping as when
>>you  weren't downloading?  it's quite possible...).
>>
>>No SSH on it yet as I haven't gotten around to compiling it and making
>>it fit (the floppy is getting to be a bit tight as the kernel is rather
>> large with all the networking code).  It was obviously designed as a
>>floppy router/firewall.
>>
>>I'll put the image up for all to get when I can fix my server.  Until I
>> get it back up (which will probably be late friday or maybe tuesday if
>> not friday), I can send it to people upon request in a personal email.
>>
>>I also have a utilities disk that has a dialog based frontend on it,
>>though it mostly just reads what's in /proc for you.
>>
>>--MonMotha
>>
>>
>>Dustin Cross wrote:
>>
>>>I am interested!  What kernel are you using?  What tools do you have
>>>on the disk?  SSH?  IPtables?
>>>
>>>Dusty
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>If you need any help doing HDD-less linux distros, don't hesitate to
>>>>ask  me as I've been working on that quite a bit recently.  I've got a
>>>>complete system with basically every networking tool you could ever
>>>>want  (including full ipv6 support) on one barely full floppy disk,
>>>>and that's  without tweaking the linking and compiler optimization for
>>>>size.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>
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> 
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