You found it .. the BootRoot page. Check out the gBootRoot page, I no longer actively maintain BootRoot because the graphical version is much more powerful!
$ which perl
/usr/bin/perl
$ grep "perl -w" boot_root
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
$ chmod 755 boot_root
$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:.:
$ mv boot_root /usr/bin
What does this program do?
BootRoot creates a boot disk with lilo, a kernel and an initrd image. The initrd script mounts another root disk with a compressed (gzip or bzip2) filesystem.
The root filesystem isn't made by this program, but there lots of compressed filesytems out there to use (see rest of FAQ). This program is patterned after mkrboot, but unlike mkrboot it creates an unique bootdisk and a separate root disk.
What's the advantage of using this program?
You can use a bzip2 compressed filesystem, this program is easy to use, and it provides a framework showing a simple initrd method which you can freely modify. I wrote this program as a solution to help oster at EE (www.experts-exchange.com) create separate boot and root floppies for an emergency system for his customers.
If you make a cool change to this program, or if this program helps you I'd love to know, that's better than receiving pizza :)
How can I test BootRoot?
Get SETUP.GZ as the filesystem from looplinux at looplinux or get it here. This filesystem works with 2.2 kernels.
[Ctrl] ([Tab] to see available images)
boot: bootdisk single [Enter]
( now filesystem is single user mode)
exit [Enter]
(now you are in multi user mode)
Better yet, do [Ctrl]
boot: bootdisk 2 [Enter]
This works nicely with a compressed root filesystems made with yard without "single" .. but looplinux comes with mc (mcedit).
Why doesn't looplinux work as "bootdisk 1?"
There is a difference between "1" and "single." Looplinux was written in a way that runlevel 1 doesn't work properly in relation to BootRoot unless single is used. And you thought they were the same thing. BootRoot proves otherwise.
What sort of configuration can I do?
Edit the variable $compress to either gzip (default) or bzip2.
How do I use the program?
program_name lilo linux-kernel compressed-filesystem
"lilo" is the only method supported at the present.
Example:
"linux-kernel" could be: /boot/vmlinuz-2.2.14
"compressed-filesystem" could be: /home/createit/my_creation.gz
(if found in same directory when running the program)
"linux-kernel could be": vmlinuz-2.2.14
"compressed-filesystem" could be: my_creation.gz