ftp.robots.ox.ac.uk:/pub/linux/ox-usr/rootdisk This directory contains a bootable floppy disk image that should allow you to boot linux on any 386 or 486 PC with a supported ethernet card. The kernel is linux-pl10 + ALPHA-diffs + one line fix + minor ioperm mods (which you really don't want to know about). FILES ----- README -- this file. linux-pl10a.gz -- the bootable root disk image. scsi-xt-boot.gz -- boot floppy with scsi, xt kitchen sink etc support. usr.bin.tgz -- user networking binaries *unpack in /usr* usr.etc.tgz -- networking daemons etc *unpack in /usr* keymaps.tgz -- non UK keymaps (cp to /etc/keymap) INSTALLATION: ------------ You can copy the image onto a floppy from most unix/linux machines with: gunzip < linux-pl10a.gz | dd of=/dev/fd0 bs=18k Under msdog you will need to gunzip (with gzip.exe -d) the image then copy it to a floppy with rawrite.exe. LIMITATIONS: ----------- The image will only fit on a 3.5" drive, so you must have a 3.5" drive as A: Booting is slow, the disk got pretty fragmented in setting up and I didn't use the lilo fast read options which don't work on all machines. The bootable root disk only has ide, nfs, minix, ext2, mouse and math emu. If you want to have SCSI or XT disk support, you will need to use the scsi boot image and then insert the bootable root disk at the prompt. (i.e. back to the old boot and root disk system). UPDATE: the scsi-xt image now has all standard filesystems (i.e. ext and xiafs are in). If you are on the Oxford campus the image will mount a /usr partition from ftp.robots, else where you must provide your own /usr. Attempting to mount from ftp.robots will force me to remove this service, the current linux nfs code will produces far to high ethernet and nfs server load to not cause major disruptions. Although the ftp.robots /usr partition contains Xfree86, it is not possible to run it over nfs as mmap is not supported over nfs (please feel free to implement this and send the patches to linus - it isn't _that_ hard...). WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: ---------------------- You need to know the following information before you can successfully use this boot image - make sure you know the configuration answers before attempting to boot! 1) Permission of your local netadmin. 2) Your PCs host name. 3) The IP address of your PC. 4) The IP address of the gateway/default router out of your network. 5) The netmask for your network If you are outside Oxford you also need: 6) The IP address of your local named server. 7) a /usr partition that you can mount which contains the networking daemons in /usr/etc and user binaries in /usr/bin If you are not on a B or C class network the you will also need to know: 8) Your broadcast address 9) The net address for your network - what default packets for your local ethernet are routed to. BOOTING: ------- Supported cards are The Novell NE-2000 The 3c503 EtherLink II WD80x3 Western Digital (SMC) WD80x3. *#! If you don't have one of these you are on your own. *#! WD80x3 cards must have the shared ram address at 0x4E000 for them to work! Use wdsetup under linux or ezsetup under dos to set this up. Alternatively if the auto configure doesn't work you can stop the boot at the lilo prompt and give the ethernet card options there as ether=IRQ,IOADDR,SHMEMSTART,SHMEMEND,IS8BIT,eth0 e.g. LILO linux ether=10,0x300,0x4E000,0x52000,1,eth0 INSTALLING FROM THIS BOOT IMAGE: -------------------------------- The aim of this image was to allow people to try linux before committing themselves. It should be possible to also use it as an install base. Use fdisk and mkfs prepare your hard disk in the normal way. Then mount the new root partition on /mnt and you can use the /bin/copy_rootdisk script to copy everything to your new root partition e.g. #mount -t ext2 /mnt #/bin/copy_rootdisk Then edit /etc/lilo/config (/etc/lilo/config.hda is an example hard disk setup) and run: /etc/lilo/lilo -r /mnt to install linux on your hard disk. If you don't have a UK keyboard, remove /etc/keymap (for US keyboards) or replace /etc/keymap with the correct map from the keymap.tgz archive. The rest is up to you. BUGS: ---- The binaries in usr.bin.tgz and usr.etc.tgz, are recent but possibly not the most bug free, if you know of a superior version of any of these please mail me at the address below. rlogin does works between a PC and SUN which makes a change Jon.