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Unix Operating Systems Software

Running Unix Entirely from CD? 54

Posted by Cliff from the if-it-can-be-done-with-floppies dept.
Dasein asks: "I am working as a Tech Support Developer, and I had a wonderful idea a few months ago. After stumbling upon Trinux, I modified it so that I could run Linux on any PC with a floppy. By doing this, I was able to backup on our network valuable data on users' computers when their OS failed. This summer I wanted to develop a similar idea but this time with a CD. I was having trouble finding Linux/BSD distributions that could run solely off a CD, and I'm a bit scared to start one from scratch because I wouldn't know where to begin. Does anyone have any suggestions?" nik suggests: On the BSD front, there's the LiveCD project, which seems to do exactly what you want.
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Running Unix Entirely from CD? More

Running Unix Entirely from CD?

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  • Tom's root boot -- not exactly a CD (Score:3, Informative)

    by djn ( 118825 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @11:56AM (#3795740) Homepage
    You mention Trinux in the article, which by default requires extra floppies or a network connection to work, it seems. Another great floppy-based "distro" is Tom's Root Boot [toms.net]. It's saved me several times. It has support for almost any device you could imagine, all packed on one floppy. Not quite a CD-based distro, but still very cool.

  • superrescue and isolinux (Score:3, Informative)

    by xFallenAngel ( 565811 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @12:02PM (#3795767)
    I have a good link for a Linux System off CD...

    check out superrescue [kernel.org]

    I guess using that as a base, it wouldn't be too hard to create a bsd system or other.

    If you still want to create your own system from scratch, isolinux [zytor.com] is helpful. It takes care of the booting. The only other thing you would have to manage is to mount a ramdisk for /var and maybe /etc (anything that needs rw).

    have fun :)

  • choices (Score:5, Informative)

    by LinuxGeek8 ( 184023 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @12:07PM (#3795791) Homepage
    There are several distro's that can run from cd.
    There's Demolinux, which is quite nice. It comes with gnome and kde and so.
    There's the Linuxcare cd, which is like 100 or 200 Mb in size I believe.
    There's also the Suse live evaluation cd, which I have no experience with. Suse also offers custom firewalls running from cd.
    • Also, the RedHat Install CD's can be booted using 'linux rescue' at the initial boot prompt. You wind up in run level 1 with ramdisks providing root fs from a root image on the CD.

      As far as I can tell, the kernel is rather full featured and should be able to mount vfat fs, although I have not tried it. I know I can mount my ATA RAID and get the network up because I have done that.

    • The linuxcare CD is 50 MB, as is lnx-bbc. They fit on Business card CDRs.
    • The SuSE live evaluation CD is amazing! I ran my laptop, which also doubles as a home machine, of it for 2 weeks non-stop when the HD died. Every piece of HW in my laptop was supported. The only thing I had to do to make it usable for every day tasks was to create a user, and mount my $HOME over NFS from my home server. Granted, running KDE was just a bit slow, but that's to be expected when every file you read or write is located on another machine with only a 10Mbit ethernet connection between.

  • Two linuxes... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mr.Ned ( 79679 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @12:09PM (#3795803)
    Demolinux (http://www.demolinux.org/) runs Linux + KDE/GNOME off a CD. It can optionally write to the hard drive in what they call an "anchor file".

    Devil-Linux (http://www.devil-linux.org/) is a distribution targeted at servers with a need for security. The /etc is a write-protected floppy disk, and all programs are loaded off CD-ROM.

    I remember a Slashdot thread that I can't find about floppy-disk distros - some people chimed in about a Super-Rescue CD from kernel.org.

  • Gentoo (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iangoldby ( 552781 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @12:17PM (#3795833) Homepage
    The Gentoo boot CDROM gives you a usable Linux system booting from CDROM. You can download the iso at http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gen too/releases/build/1.2/gentoo-ix86-1.2.iso [ibiblio.org]

    I'm not sure how this differs (if at all) from Tom's Root Boot mentioned by 'djn' earlier. You may find this is all you need - burn the CD, insert and switch on computer.

  • The best (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 30, 2002 @12:21PM (#3795847)
    Knoppix [knopper.net] owns them all. It boots straight into KDE without asking questions, detects most other hardware automatically aswell and comes with an incredible amount of software ready to use.
  • I've also been looking for cd-only-linux-distro also and next one I'll try out is Mandrake 8.1 based Virtual-Linux [virtual-linux.org]
  • Gibraltar [gibraltar.at] is a nice debian boot-from-CDrom/run-off-CDrom distribution geared towards firewalls.

    Hope this helps

    David

  • Knoppix (Score:1, Redundant)

    by MGKaiser ( 410924 )
    There is a system that boots from cd called Knoppix [knopper.net].
    I never used it, but it seems to be quite mature and usable. It even uses swap partitions on the hdd, if there are any.

    Regards,
    mgk

  • I know that the 4cd sale version of Slackware Linux [slackware.com] comes with a "Bootable live disc, the Ultimate Linux rescue and demo disc!" (as they describe it on the website). I've never actually tried it, but I've never had problems with slackware products.

    • It's _fantastic_. Boots from cd to a fully live system. The supplied X setting work well. I've saved a few users data when NT decides it doesn't want to work.

    • I'd love to find an .ISO for you to download (or provide it myself), but I believe that they deserve the money. Sure, it's all GPL, and we could legally distribute it, but it's worth the $40. [slackware.com]

      My Win2k hard drive recently died in my Thinkpad. I don't know much about Windows, but I have to use it for work. I took it to my local support guy, explained the problem ("It gets halfway through the pretty 'windows 2000' screen and never finishes"). He tried it for himself, and got the same resutls. To get any data off of it, there were two steps -- he could put it in another machine, or try to install win2k over the old version and boot on its own. The other machine would freeze in the same place every time it tried to boot with my drive in, too. The win2k installer gave wacky messages (different every time), and never in 10 attempts did start to install. His diagnosis: A partition table too corrupt to permit any use.

      I told him that I wouldn't give up, but I'd take it home and wack at it with Linux. After a very pessimistic look and explanations that my data was very likely deep in the bit bucket, I was permitted to do so. Once home, I snagged my Slackware 8.0 bootable live CD, booted it up and off we went. I loaded the NTFS module, the module for my net card, and FTPed all the files I wanted to my Mac OS X machine. Say what you want about Slackware's package manager, but it's a slick distro that gets the stuff done. Don't get me wrong, booting off the CD (and loading X, which I did for kicks alone -- worked right away) can be a slow process.

  • I'd also like to run Linux off a CD, but my requirements are slightly different.

    I have a (very) low-end laptop with a dead hard drive. It does not have the ability to boot of a CD, only a floppy. I would like to boot off the floppy and then root over to the CD. I would use it for a firewall, router, etc. I haven't been able to cram pcmcia pppd and the rest on just a floppy. So If I could utilize the CD I'd be home free.

    Does anyone know if any of the above mentioned CD solutions support booting off a floppy?

    • Slackware - http://www.slackware.com/. The latest version 8.1 has just come out in the last few days, but the older versions will all do this. There are boot and root floppies, and the second CD is a bootable standalone system. If you boot from the standard bootable floppy you can from the boot: prompt tell it that you want the CD (/dev/hdb, or /dev/hdc or what ever) as the root - and away you go! Good luck
    • Just take a bootable CD and copy the kernel to a raw floppy:
      dd if=/boot/bzLinux of=/dev/fd0
      That's it! no filesystem, no LILO, nor anything, just the kernel
    • I have the exact same situation--dead hard drive on old 133Mhz machine that I'm using for a firewall. I ended up using the Dachstein distribution--see the home page [sourceforge.net] for the linux firewall project.

      It's quite a slick setup--they've built a nice system! It boots off of the CD, loads configuration data from a floppy (basically stored as diffs from the configuration files on the CD), seems to be pretty secure, runs a 2.4 kernel, etc, etc. After it has booted, everything is loaded into RAM and it doesn't access the CD any more.

      -matt

    • (Nearly?) all bootable CDs allow you to do this. They have a 1.44MB floppy image on the CD that you can write to a floppy using dd in Linux, or with the supplied rawrite2 in Windows. Then you can boot the floppy and it will start Linux from the CD. I know at least the Debian and RedHat boot cds, Knoppix, and DemoLinux all have this. I recommend Knoppix, BTW; it was only a month out of date last time I checked.

  • This page [ocslink.com] has a tarball of scripts that let you take a running Debian system and make a Live-CD version of it.

    Last time I used it, I managed to get a kernel and enough of a root filesystem together to run an MP3 player out of a ramdisk. With a full CD of space, you could do much, much more.

  • not linux but may as well mention it

    http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9
  • www.linuxfromscratch.org [linuxfromscratch.org] - They'll be glad to help you desing your own setup and guide you through the steps required to run off of a read-only medium. Most of the info is in the hints archive, I believe.

  • Bootable Dedicated Game Servers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RevAaron ( 125240 ) <revaaron AT hotmail DOT com> on Sunday June 30, 2002 @02:12PM (#3796265) Homepage
    I'm not a big gamer, but I've been to a handful of LAN parties.

    Inevitably, at least at the ones I've been to, there is always someone spending half or a third of the day futzing with their spare machine to get a dedicated game server going. Which got me thinking... There are a bunch of these games with a dedicated server versions for Linux. Wouldn't it be sweet if you had, on a bootable CD, a barebones Linux install that booted straight into a pre-configured, and chock-full of maps, game server? You'd need a seperate CD for each game of course. Some games wouldn't even fit on a CD. Perhaps a bootable DVD is the answer? Or swapping CDs with 'mappacks?'
  • There was a similar article [slashdot.org] several months ago with a run down on the various floppy / cd based systems. It is probably well worth your while to check out that previous thread. I've seen a couple of good CD based ones around, especially the ones arranged such that they fit on a business card sized CD-R and hence provide you with the ability of a nice in wallet rescue disk. Checkout linuxcare [linuxcare.com]'s offering
  • There is a Diskless Nodes HOWTO [tldp.org] which basically covers your question. It seems there are lots of Live Linux distributions out there but I have personally only tried a version of SUSE Live Linux, which worked well.
  • Zipslack (http://www.slackware.com/zipslack/) from Slackware (http://www.slackware.com/) may be a step in the right direction.

  • Done it with OpenBSD (Score:2, Interesting)

    by DieNadel ( 550271 )
    I've done it with OpenBSD. It's actually quite simple and easy to set up.
    One thing I've found helpful was to do it first on a harddrive set only for this (trying to boot it, recompiling and all), and then burning the CD. The first time I tried it, I was making it on top of another intallation and that got me tunning the former installation, which had nothing to do with my intended CD, just to cleanly compile it all.
    Take a look at this article [daemonnews.org] and man mfs.
  • Linux Weekly News's distribution list [lwn.net] has several CD-based distros on it.
  • Take a look at this [bablokb.de].

    From the web site: BBLCD is a toolkit for building your own bootable Linux CD from your favorite (and possibly customized) distribution. It is more or less an intelligent cp -a / /dev/cdrom (with Linux, it's not that simple, but with Windows, it's impossible). I have created this toolkit because these single-floppy Linux systems have three major drawbacks: floppies are slow, errorprone and always too small.

    The current stable version is fully functional. I have tested it with SuSE 7.x, Red-Hat 7 and Debian 2.2. I have user reports that it also works with Red-Hat 6.2. In fact, it would surprise me if it didn't work with any distribution, but there are so many around, so you never know.

  • Knoppix (Score:2, Informative)

    by Stillman ( 185591 )
    This one blew me away.

    Germans never cease to amaze me! :)

    So go try knoppix [knopper.net] now!

    It's autodetection is incredible, you can save state/prefs to floppy between boots, and it's very VERY up-to-date.

  • Have a look at the ClosedBSD [closedbsd.org] web site. Fits the bill much like LiveCD does.
  • There is a pretty neat bootable cd option at telemetrybox.org [telemetrybox.org] that has a lot of network tools packed in.

    I recently used it to change permissions on a directory that got screwed up on a linux based NAS unit. I was very pleased.

  • I did something similar to this back in February, starting with Slackware, but it should be easy enough to use another distro. Basically, you use tmpfs for /etc, /var, /tmp, or whatever you want to be writable, and fill in the contents at boot time from static copies of those locations. Then you can just run the thing as usual.

    You'll need some custom init scripts that don't require /etc to start up, basically all you need to do is mount /etc /var /tmp, cp files in, and then start up normal system init, or whatever.

    This isn't very detailed, but it should get the point across on how to go about implementing.
  • There's this distribution:

    http://www.lnx-bbc.org/

    that is designed to fit in your wallet!
  • Knoppix is a very nice project:

    http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
  • Doesn't anyone know how to use Google [google.com] anymore?

    Or has Ask Slashdot become "Ask Slashdot For Help Using a Search Engine"?

    - A.P.
    • While you are offtopic here, I will still give an answer.

      Google is great and I use it all the time. Sometimes it is better to have a discussion about people's experiences. Sure he/she could have used Google but would some of the solutions discussed have been found? It's always good to get some good tips in one place which is something that Google doesn't do.

      The results would show a bunch of straight-forward CD-booting distros but wouldn't have come up with any of the more creative solutions. Google has a HUGE number of websites indexed but it is by no means complete.
  • As other posters have mentioned, this has been done lots of times. I did it myself back in the RedHat 5.2 days and had a nice little Network Computer that ran entirely off a CD. At the time, I started with diskettes from the Linux Router Project (LRP), but if I were doing it again today, I think I'd choose a project that already worked from a CD, to avoid reinventing stuff. Mindi Linux comes to mind. It is part of the Mondo Rescue porject and sounds like it is already close to what you are trying to accomplish.
  • Seems to me that rescue disks always use a ramdisk for the root partition,
    because you can't mount a read/write /etc or /var on top of a
    read-only root. Am I missing something here?

    I want to do the same thing with compact FLASH for various
    embedded applications (the car MP3 player I want to build, etc.)
    That is writeable but it has limited life, so it would be best to
    mount it read-only most of the time.
  • Most of the comments have focused on rescue-type environments. If you want to make your own cd-based linux distro, check out The BBLCD Toolkit [bablokb.de]. It's the toolkit that was used to make the linuxcare bootable cd.

    Basically, you set up a partition with a linux distro, customize it all you want, make sure it's smaller then 650M, and tell the program to burn it to a cd.

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