[plug] Debian mini-iso.sh script or boot-floppies .deb?

[Matt Kemner]

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, quoth Denis Brown:

> I'm in the process of making a customised install CD for Debian Woody -
> customised kernel with specific RAID controller drivers.
[...]
> The information I have seen so far (and I've done a bit of digging!) is
> either incomplete, apparently contradictory or contains url's that point
> to inaccessible sites.

In case it helps, here is what I scratched together (with trial and error)
when building the custom bf2.4 minicd ISOs we at LinuxIT use for
installing systems (available at http://members.westnet.com.au/kemner/)

They are in point form, mainly to refresh my memory for when I need to
update the kernel, so if you need me to expand on any of it let me know.

First thing I did was loopmount one of the existing bf2.4 mini ISOs and
copy the entire contents to a build/ subdirectory.  These instructions
assume you are one level below that build/ directory, and that another
directory called rescue/ also exists.

There's also a directory called drivers/ which contains the contents of
build/dists/woody/main/disks-i386/current/bf2.4/drivers.tgz

Then all I need to do to include a new revision of the kernel is:

 1. compile kernel with make-kpkg
 2. extract kernel to /usr/src/tmp with dpkg-deb -x kernel-image-blah /usr/src/tmp
 3. cd /usr/src/tmp; tar czvf ~-/drivers/modules.tgz lib/
 4. cd /CD-Images/tmp/litbf2.4/drivers/;
    tar czvf ../build/dists/woody/main/disks-i386/current/bf2.4/drivers.tgz  *
 5. cd .. ; mount -o loop build/boot/rescue.bin rescue/
 6. cp /usr/src/tmp/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.XX-bf2.4-lit rescue/linux.bin
 7. vim rescue/install.sh -> change VERSION
 8. vim rescue/debian.txt -> change version
 9. gzip -c /usr/src/tmp/boot/config-2.4.XX-bf2.4-lit  >rescue/config.gz
10. umount rescue/
11. cd /usr/src/promiseraid; make clean; make
12. rm -rf ~-/build/modules/2.4.{XX-1}/
13. cp ft3xx.o ~-/build/modules/2.4.XX/
14  cd -
15. mkisofs -J -b boot/rescue.bin -r -o lit-2.4.XX-bf2.4.iso -R build/

You can skip the promise raid stuff.. I needed that for one system I
installed recently.  I'm still dark about promise only proving a module
based driver, and not providing a way to compile it into the kernel - so
you need to use an initrd if you wish to mount the raid array as the root.

Also, if you drop a copy of basedebs.tar into build/ then the installation
system will find it, which means you can install the base system from the
CD - and it will still fit on a 50MB business card CD with room to spare.
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          39M Jan  8 15:48 lit-2.4.24-bf2.4.iso

Hope this helps...

Regards,

 - Matt Kemner
   Linux IT