[coLinux-devel] Installing a "normal" distribution on coLinux - "The Slackware on coLinux HOWTO"

[Nir P. <ni...@em...>]

Hi y'all,

Here's how I installed slackware on coLinux. After you read it all (sorry -
it is long), you may apply the same tricks to other distributions.
For now it is just the installation notes - tomorrow I hope to post again
with detailed files/patches/etc., after I compare some things to my real
native slackware (I don't have it near me).
Also, to do the required little tweaks, you'll probably need a Linux box. I
used coLinux itself with the 1GB debian image available for download (as I
was far from my box).

And to the process itself:

*** Copying ISO to hard-disk
As noted before, you can't just boot the CD. I just copied the entire CD to
the hard-disk. You can do it many ways. I guess best one is to "wget" it
from one of the slackware mirrors.

*** Extract the rootdisk
I took the rootdisk from slackware:
rootdisk/install.1 is a gzipped ext2 filesystem. "gzip -cd" it to some image
file, then loop-mount it somewhere.
rootdisk/install.2 is a gzipped tar file. go to the root of the previous
loop mounted image, and "tar zvxf" it.
We will now tweak the root image a little, and later pack it back.

*** Add the /dev/cobdX nodes
I used 3 images to install (3 for: where the CD content was, the target
disk, and the installation root disk), so I created 3 nodes:
mknod /dev/cobd0 b 117 0
mknod /dev/cobd1 b 117 1
mknod /dev/cobd2 b 117 2

*** Patch the setup script
A while ago I posted here about installing linux from normal CDs. I
commented that you would probably need to change some scripts... well,
here's an example of one...
Slackware installer is trying to guess which partitions you have. It uses
"/proc/partitions". coLinux doesn't list anything there (maybe we should add
some dummies to allow easier installations in the future...). The installer
builds a list of partitions available for installations.
In that place of the setup script I commented out the "probe -l ...", and
put explicitly "/dev/cobd0" into "$TMP/SeTplist". I will probably post
tomorrow a real patch here (I need to compare that to a native
installation).

*** Start coLinux with the 3 image files
After unmounting the root image (where we changed the setup script), I
changed the coLinux XML config file to include 3 image files:
cobd0) The target to be installed (you can just use a copy of the 1gb debian
image for this one - just "format" it in the installer)
cobd1) Here you should have the copy of the installation CD - you'll need it
for the packages
cobd2) This is the modified installer root image   <== this should be the
root (we'd like to boot this one)

Now you can just install whatever packages you'd like. Slackware's
simplicity helps here - for other distributions you might need more
tweaking...
console notes: the installer looks bad in the colinux console. also the
arrows didn't really work so I used "+" and "-" to move up and down in the
lists.

Now you have your own slackware. To use it, you just have to change the root
in the XML config to be /dev/cobd0 (you can remove the extra two disk images
now).

Once running, you will get some errors -
First, slackware is not too happy the filesystem is already mounted
read/write. It should be mounted read-only at first, so "fsck" can check it.
Just hitting ENTER here would get you pass this one for now (I haven't tried
yet to make coLinux mount the root read-only).
Then of course, it can't open dependencies file (modules.dep) - well, we did
just take the kernel without any module...
Other than that, I got myself a working slackware, network capable out of
the box.

I installed large amount of the packages, so I can't really post this ~800MB
image file anywhere... I do plan on uploading the modified root-image and
config file required... stay tuned.

Well, that was long. And one might ask - "what does this help me? I don't
want slackware...". Sorry, I use slackware, so that's what I can test. But
the basic idea should be the same for other distributions - you'll have to
make a root-disk. Any installation that's easy to install from floppies,
should be easy to support with this procedure. All we need at the end are
the root-disks.

P.S. I didn't spend much time editing the text here, so forgive me if I made
some mistakes...

Nir