 | This document may be outdated. If the date on the title page is
more than six months ago, please check the Bootdisk-HOWTO homepage to see if a more recent version exists.
|
Although this document should be legible in its text form,
it looks much better in Postscript, PDF or HTML forms because of
the typographical conventions used.
Graham Chapman wrote the original Bootdisk-HOWTO and supported it
through version 3.1. Tom Fawcett started as co-author around the time
kernel v2 was introduced, and he is the document's current maintainer.
Chapman has disappeared from the Linux community and his whereabouts are
currently unknown.
This information is intended for Linux on the
Intel platform. Much of this information may be
applicable to Linux on other processors, but I have no first-hand
experience or information about this. If you have experience with
bootdisks on other platforms, please contact me.
User-mode-linux ( http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net) seems like a great
way to test out bootdisks without having to reboot your machine
constantly. I haven't been able to get it to work. If anyone has
been using this consistently with homemade bootdisks, please let
me know.
Re-analyze distribution bootdisks and update the "How the
Pros do it" section.
Figure out just how much of the init-getty-login sequence can
be simplified, and rip it out. A few people have said that
init can be linked directly to /bin/sh; if so, and if this imposes
no great limitations, alter the instructions to do this.
This would eliminate the need for getty, login, gettydefs, and
maybe all that PAM and NSS stuff.
Go through the 2.4 kernel source code again and write a
detailed explanation of how the boot process and ramdisk-loading
process work, in detail. (If only so that I understand it
better.) There are some issues about initrd and limitations of
booting devices (eg flash memory) that I don't understand yet.
Delete section that describes how to upgrade existing
distribution bootdisks. This is usually more trouble than it's
worth.
Replace rdev commands with LILO keywords.
I welcome any feedback, good or bad, on the content of this
document. I have done my best to ensure that the instructions and
information herein are accurate and reliable, but I don't know
everything and I don't keep up on kernel development. Please let me
know if you find errors or omissions. When writing, please indicate the
version number of the document you're referencing. Be nice.
We thank the many people who assisted with corrections and
suggestions. Their contributions have made it far better than we
could ever have done alone.
Send comments and corrections to the author at the email address
above. Please read Section 7
before asking me questions. Do
not email me disk images.
Copyright © 1995-2002 by Tom Fawcett and Graham Chapman.
This document may be distributed under the terms set forth in the Linux Documentation Project
License. Please contact the authors if you are unable to get
the license.
This is free documentation. It is distributed in the hope
that it will be useful, but without any
warranty; without even the implied warranty of
merchantability or fitness for a
particular purpose.
Take our 
