[luau] HDD-less Linux

MonMotha monmotha at indy.rr.com
Tue Apr 30 14:08:04 PDT 2002


Has anyone tried this image?  If so, does it work?  Are there any 
problems with it that need to be fixed (other than missing features of 
course :)?

--MonMotha

MonMotha wrote:
> 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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