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Rich Freeman <rich0 <at> gentoo.org> writes: |
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> Generally the kernel is the easiest thing to get off of one of those |
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> LiveDVDs by just sticking the DVD in a drive and reading it (without |
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> booting it). Everything else on the DVD except for the kernel and |
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> initramfs and bootloader tends to go in some big squashfs or the like. |
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> However, the kernel has to be someplace the bootloader can read it, |
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> and that usually means a vmlinuz or whatever on the root directory. |
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Right now the (2) systems are booted up on media, so I cannot test this. |
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(later on I will). |
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> You could probably just use the same kernel on your own system, unless |
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> it has an embedded command line or initramfs (I forget offhand how |
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> overriding either of these works). |
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Yes. scp is my favorite for this.... but I want to look at the actual |
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kernels that are used for bootup of a livedvd and the minimal, for |
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many reasons. |
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> Most bootloaders tend to not |
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> require these, but in some embedded situations you could run into |
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> them. Once upon a time the kernel had a BIOS boot sector in the first |
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> 512 bytes so you could just dd the kernel onto a disk and boot it |
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> (there is still a stub that will tell you to bugger_off_msg if you do |
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> that in arch/x86/boot/header.S). (just a bit of trivial there) |
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Do tell more. |
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Now this would be most useful to me. If you recall (over 6 months ago) |
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I was (am) working on a setup where I can use all of the old systems, |
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drives, usb, and a plethora of embedded boards to run variants |
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of embedded gentoo through minimal gentoo. I particularly got stuck |
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on how to quickly reinstall a system moving media around. If |
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I could just "dd" kernels/images around, I could keep many images/kernels on |
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a server and then boot--> chroot one of those aforementioned "test boxes" |
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and quickly and have a minimal old cpu test system online for hacking. I |
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(temporarily) shelved that project to get clustering going with btrfs, ceph |
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and mesos+spark on gentoo. Naturally, I have bitten off |
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a wee_bit too much, but, life is good! |
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Likewise, meino was (is?) working on porting/hacking the |
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old venerable netconsole.c [1] to some newer embedded boards. |
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Many variants of netconsole.c have existed over the decades..... |
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I think running embedded/minimum gentoos via secure portal is kind of the |
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next step (for me) after figuring out a semantic for being about to use all |
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those old x86 and amd64 boxes for various testings of singular codes |
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and all sorts of custombuilt hardware across the net. That way |
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folks could hack remotely without having to have the specific hardwware. |
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Developing virtually is great, but at some point you have torun |
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the codes on actual hardware. After x86 I'm going to support |
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a variety of arm boards (that run linux). |
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*SO* do tell me more......as I'm curious about your "dd" of kernels |
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and such. |
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> Rich |
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James |
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[1] http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/drivers/net/netconsole.c |
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