2.6 remaster

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: 2.6 remaster
started by: markn

Posted by markn on July 10 2005,10:04

I'm fairly new to dsl, but not linux as I normally run gentoo. I love the basic ideas of dsl, particularly the idea of extending a live distro with a writable partition, mydsl etc. Hwoever, I do have beefy modern hardware so pine after some of the latest and greatest. I'm typing this on a dual opteron system using an unsupported silicon image SATA controller. I'd like to use DSL as a rescue disk amongst other things to pull files from my server by nfs, or maybe ssh, rsync.

I'm interested to know if I could drop in a 2.6 kernel myself. Does anyone know if the system has the correct modul-init-tools for modprobe etc.I'm fairly new to dsl, but not linux as I normally run gentoo. I love the basic ideas of dsl, particularly the idea of extending a live distro with a writable partition, mydsl etc. Hwoever, I do have beefy modern hardware so pine after some of the latest and greatest. I'm typing this on a dual opteron system using an unsupported silicon image SATA controller. I'd like to use DSL as a rescue disk amongst other things to pull files from my server by nfs, or maybe ssh, rsync.

I'm interested to know if I could drop in a 2.6 kernel myself. Does anyone know if the system has the correct modul-init-tools for modprobe etc.

I do understand that DSL wont go 2.6 any time soon, but since its designed to be extensible, it should be a reletively simple remaster option?

Mark

I do understand that DSL wont go 2.6 any time soon, but since its designed to be extensible, it should be a reletively simple remaster option?

Mark

Posted by cbagger01 on July 10 2005,11:41

It is hard to "extend" a new kernel version into a livecd.

The extension loading process happens after the kernel is already loaded up and running, so it is hard (I won't use the word "impossible" because someone will eventually figure out a way to do it) to run an upgraded kernel without a full hd install or a remastered livecd.

If you want to try DSL with a newer kernel, user tronik has already done a remaster of DSL with the 2.4.27 kernel (which has SATA support).

Search the forums for the link to his site.

Posted by markn on July 10 2005,13:06

Thanks cbagger01. I may not have been clear. In fact I note my previous post was mangled due to a bad copy paste. Sorry. I do understand that it would be difficult to say the least

to load a kernel as an extension. I was actually thinking of dropping a different kernel into the hoot image partition of my usb drive. I suspect that even if I didnt use modules however at least the initrd and maybe modutils would have to be updated and a remaster done.

When I referred to extensions I was just stating my reasons for wanting to stick with DSL and not find another live distro based around 2.6. Sorry for any confusion..

DSL has great potential to bridge the livecd hdinstall worlds.

I've done a search under user tronik briefly and not found the post. But I will try again

Thaks

Mark

Posted by roberts on July 10 2005,13:46

Mark, Yes, you can drop in other kernels. It is not that difficult. I have several proto-types of DSL on 2.4.27 and a 2.6.11. These proto-types all have various issues from beta testors and some size issues and that is why I have not done such for general distribution. But you can, like tronik and some others, come up with something that works for your particular hardware. But this is an area that will, of course, be followed and monitored for a reliable general distribution with minimal tradeoffs. Some of the other small distros have moved forward only to fall back to a more stable and widest range of hardware support.

Posted by cbagger01 on July 10 2005,15:19

I searched for the link and found it.

Tronik's unofficial DSL remaster with 2.4.27 kernel (SATA support) is found here:

< http://dslmirror.vectori.net/ >

Posted by markn on July 25 2005,19:52

n update.

I've updated 1.3.0 to the latest knoppix kernel. This is from memory, but here is what I did

Download knoppix 3.9 and boot into it. Extract the minirt.gz, kernel and /lib/modules and save somewhere safe.

Unzip both dsl and knoppix minirt's, replace the .linuxrc file in the knoppix minirt with the one from dsl. The modified knoppix minirt along with the knoppix kernel will then be used to boot dsl.

You will then have to follow a normal remastering process to replaceing dsl's /lib/modules with those from knoppix. I had some problems with modules.dep and /etc/modprobe.conf. In the end I used /etc/mkwritable and modules-update to regenerate the files. (I admit I'm a little hazy on this part).

I do get a warning re missing hid module, this is now called usbhid. As a workaround I have added modprobe usbhid to /opt/bootlocal.sh. At this I can boot in under 2.6 see and access my sata and all other hardware just fine.

I've made a quick and dirty mdadm and rsync dsl using the deb2dsl script, which was very useful. They arent currently good enough to submit as they are not optimised or cleaned up at all, I'm also not sure if the raid modules were in the base dsl kernel to make use of mdadm.

My aim is to be able to mount my raid5 array in my server where my backups are mounted and to use dsl to perform rescues amongst other jobs. However, knoppix does not provide enough /dev/hdx entries I need /dev/hdk and /dev/hdi. Generating them after boot does not seem to be enough as the promise driver is built in and I can't reinitialise it. I think I may need to remaster knoppix again using mknod to provide the missing entries, or look at /etc/knoppix-autoconf to see if they are generated automatically somehow.

Anyway this is starting to ramble. I'll just close by saying that I'm finding dsl to be very powerful and am impressed. This post is not detailed enough to constitute a howto, but it may prove useful to someone down the road.

Thanks for a great distro

Mark