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Posted by: dingetje Dec 23 2003, 02:33 PM

QUOTE

This is a mirror of a howto posted by tom on the official forum at http://forums.freesco.org/

Dingetje

This is how I make Freesco bootable from cdrom. It's partially based on Deoren's how-to (thanks Deoren!) but mostly it was alot of googling and trial and error.

The Freesco box that I used has Freesco 032 and Win98 running on /dev/hdb1 and the cdrom is on /dev/hdc. Yours might be different.

Things you'll need:

Freesco box with a cdrom installed
Freesco installed to the hard drive
Knoppix ( http://knoppix.net )... a "live" linux distro that runs straight off the cdrom
Access to a cd burner (it doesn't have to be on your Freesco box)

First you'll need to setup Freesco so everything works fine and move it to your harddrive.

Next, you need to install a kernel that has cdrom support (i usually use #5 from lightnings kernel-1.3-lightning package).

now, install any packages that you want (mc...)

When you're finished, put your Knoppix cd in the drive and reboot. I type in "knoppix 2" at the boot prompt so it doesn't boot to the desktop.

mount your Freesco drive

CODE

mount -t umsdos -o rw /dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb1

setup our working environment

CODE

mkdir /mnt/hdb1/freesco
mkdir /mnt/hdb1/freesco/oldram
mkdir /mnt/hdb1/freesco/newram

copy the ramdisk to our working environment (and rename it)

CODE

cp /mnt/hdb1/router/ramdisk /mnt/hdb1/freesco/ram1.gz

unzip it

CODE

gunzip /mnt/hdb1/freesco/ram1.gz

mount it as a loop device so we can modify it

CODE

mount -o loop /mnt/hdb1/freesco/ram1 /mnt/hdb1/freesco/oldram

now we have to edit /mnt/hdb1/freesco/oldram/etc/rc (I use "mc")

change line #42 from "bd Mounting -t umsdos" to "bd Mounting -t iso9660"
comment out line #53 (umssync -g 99 -u 99 -r 99 -v- boot /dev/null)
save the file and exit

If you want to add files to the ramdisk, now's the time to do it but I suggest making it bigger though first.

CODE

dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/hdb1/freesco/ram2 bs=1M count=4

format the new ramdisk

CODE

mke2fs /mnt/hdb1/freesco/ram2

mount it

CODE

mount -o loop /mnt/hdb1/freesco/ram2 /mnt/hdb1/freesco/newram

copy everything from the old ramdisk to the new one

CODE

cp -a /mnt/hdb1/freesco/oldram/* /mnt/hdb1/freesco/newram

unmount both of them

CODE

umount /mnt/hdb1/freesco/oldram
umount /mnt/hdb1/freesco/newram

gzip the new ramdisk

CODE

gzip -9 /mnt/hdb1/freesco/ram2

move it to the "router" directory and rename it as "ramdisk.cd"

CODE

mv /mnt/hdb1/freesco/ram2.gz /mnt/hdb1/router/ramdisk.cd

Now we need to make the isolinux directory to hold the boot files

CODE

mkdir /mnt/hdb1/isolinux

Now we need to locate the "isolinux.bin" file (included in Knoppix)

CODE

locate isolinux

I used Knoppix 3.2 and found isolinux.bin at "/usr/lib/isolinux/isolinux.bin"

copy it to the isolinux directory you just created

CODE

cp /usr/lib/isolinux/isolinux.bin /mnt/hdb1/isolinux

now we need to make a isolinux.cfg file in /mnt/hdb1/isolinux

here's what it needs to have

CODE

default freesco initrd=/router/ramdisk.cd vga=0 ramdisk_size=128000 BOOTDEV=hdc root=/dev/ram0 panic=15
append initrd=/router/ramdisk.cd ramdisk_size=128000 BOOTDEV=hdc root=/dev/ram0 vga=0 panic=15
label freesco
kernel /router/kernel
append initrd=/router/ramdisk.cd vga=0 ramdisk_size=128000 BOOTDEV=hdc root=/dev/ram0 panic=15

now we make the bootable iso image

CODE

mkisofs -pad -l -r -J -v -V "Freesco" -o /mnt/hdb1/freesco.iso -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table /mnt/hdb1

since I don't have a burner in my Freesco box, I reboot into win98 and copy c:\freesco.iso to a shared folder and copy it to another computer to burn it but you could also reboot into your hard drive install of Freesco and copy the iso image to your ftp folder.

Tom