Re: Linux single Floppy

On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 14:09:37 -0600, Douglas Mayne staggered into the
Black Sun and said:
On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 11:28:07 -0700, finder wrote:
My aim is to make a linux image that can fit into a floppy with
minium requirements. I have compiled the linux kernel and got the
bzimage. After this what is the process to do, so that i can fit
linux into a single floppy?

Don't bother. There's no point in doing this for a system that's
intended for actual use. If you want to learn about the process of
building a rootboot floppy, go right ahead, but it's just a very long
run for a very short slide when there are things like Tom's RootBoot
available. That and almost every x86 will boot from CD now, which gives
you a lot more space to fit useful utilities in.

Tom's Root/Boot will fit in a small amount of space, <2.88M
http://www.toms.net/rb/

Tom's requires a 1.7M (82 tracks, 21 sectors/track) floppy at the very
least. Making such a floppy is AFAICT impossible with a USB floppy
drive and a Linux kernel, so hope you have a 34-pin floppy drive.

Damn Small runs from about 50M. Slax runs from <200M. Notice that
the reqired space in these examples is starting to ramp up
exponentially? They level off when they encompass everything in a full
distribution that uses between 4 to 8G. When your "floppy" will hold
8G, will you still be interested in what you can shrink down to 1.44M?

Floppies are practically obsolete now that CD-RWs are ubiquitous and
many x86s can boot from USB devices. There's little point to using
something that imposes so many limitations on available space, unless
you have some retro technology fetish.

--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com / "He is a rhythmic movement of the
-----------------------------/ penguins, is Tux." --MegaHAL
.

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