>>>>> "Florin" == Florin Andrei <florin@xxxxxxx> writes:
Florin> Guys, I might start to modify the 7.3 installer to make it
Florin> use XFS out of the box. Michael Best did some research on
Florin> it, and below are his thoughts. Do you think his plan is
Florin> ok? What are the obvious things missing? I'm planning to
Florin> use the 2.4.18 XFS-enabled kernel from oss.sgi.com, and
Florin> also start with Michael's work here:
Florin> http://www.pendragon.org/projects/valhalla-xfs/index_html
Florin> -----Forwarded Message-----
Florin> From: Michael Best <mbest@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Florin> To: linux-xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx
Florin> Cc: Christophe Zwecker <doc@xxxxxxxxxx>
Florin> Subject: Re: Status on RH7.3 installer ?
Florin> Date: 14 May 2002 16:10:07 -0600
Florin> Perhaps someone knows how to do the step that I stopped
Florin> on, which was to generate a disk/disc image for booting
Florin> from the cdrom. The default Redhat installer uses a 2.8M
Florin> installer image in the dosutils/autoboot directory of the
Florin> cd:
Florin> 2.8M cdboot.img
Florin> 1.9M initrd.img
Florin> Which appears to be a 2.8M boot image which contains:
Florin> 784k of vmlinuz (kernel) and
Florin> 1.9M of initrd.img plus
Florin> various bootup files.
Florin> I need to make one of these and then I can probably make a
Florin> cd that boots with a different kernel. By simply using
Florin> mkinitrd it makes a minimalist initrd image.
[Warning -- RH 7.2 experience]
The initrd can't be made using standard mkinitrd as far as I know. I
contains a non-standard init which calls /sbin/loader. /sbin/loader
itself is a sort of swiss knife of lots of apps rolled into one:
language selection, modprobe, hardware probes, etc. In the end,
loader runs anaconda from the stage2.img.
The easiest way I found of making a custom initrd is to gunzip the
original one, mount -oloop it, make whatever changes are required and
then umount and gzip it again. Maybe there're some tools available in
anaconda-source or anaconda-runtime-source, but was too lazy to check
:-)
Regards,
-- Raju
Florin> I already did these other steps too:
Florin> *) Added the xfs utilities to RedHat/base/stage2.img
Florin> *) Added the xfs utility rpms to Redhat/RPMS on disc1 and disc2
Florin> *) modified RedHat/base/comps to include xfs util rpms
Florin> *) updated hdlist/hdlist2 in Redhat/base/ using genhdlist from the
Florin> anaconda 7.3 source
Florin> *) learned about embedding the MD5 into the implantisomd5 and
Florin> checkisomd5 from the anaconda 7.3 source
Florin> *) examined the anaconda source code for claimed xfs support
Florin> (it appears to append XFS to the list of available filesystems
Florin> if that filesystem choice is available, more work here is needed)
Florin> -Mike
Florin> --
Florin> Florin Andrei
Florin> Spiderman according to Jon Katz: "the web-slinging arachnoid-nerd from
Florin> Queens who gets the bad guy but really wants the girl."
--
Raju Mathur raju@xxxxxxxxxxxxx http://kandalaya.org/
It is the mind that moves
