[plug] testing nic

[Sham Chukoury]

Why not try making your own boot floppy thingie? :)

Not too hard - build a kernel and chuck it onto a floppy with grub or
lilo, then make a gzipped ext2fs partition with a static busybox build,
along with any kernel modules you want, and you're all set. ;P

Notes:
- Keep the kernel as small and/or modular as possible
- Use rdev to make the kernel look for a ramdisk (bootdisk-howto), check
out <kernel src root>/Documentation/ramdisk.txt
- Maybe check out 2.6*-tiny - the new kernel source subtree said to be
optimised for space-limited systems
- Use an inittab compatible with busybox's implementation of init (yes,
it's a bit different from the real init)
- Use a simple rcS script, you don't need a complicated set of
bootscripts and runlevels with such a system
- Check out some other boot floppy systems for reference (i.e. grab and
hack their inittab and/or rcS, as well as other bits, if you need to) -
Debian has a nice set of boot floppies on its stable CD at:
<cdrom>/dists/stable/main/disks-i386/<version>/images-*/*
- Interestingly enough, the Deb Woody 3.0r1 bf2.4 root floppy for the
installer is around 3.5Mb when uncompressed, sitting on a 6Mb ext2fs
partition that compresses to fit on the floppy.
- *hint* Build all network device drivers as modules and load them from
the root floppy.

Enjoy. ;)
§:)