Slinky sysarch (pdf)
SLINKY ist der Versuch, mit minimalen Mitteln eine ausgewachsene LINUX Distribution, nämlich FEDORA, auch auf solchen PCs installieren zu können, auf denen der eigentliche Installer ANACONDA wegen zu geringer Systemrecourcen (Memory, CPU-Type) nicht läuft, obwohl das Gerät ansonsten durchaus in der Lage wäre, LINUX zu betreiben. SLINKY ist also ein Installer für FEDORA und hierin liegt auch seine Besonderheit. Gelingt es, FEDORA nicht nur zu installieren, sondern anschliessend auch zu booten, stehen prinzipiell alle Möglichkeiten von FEDORA zur Verfügung, insbesondere die Installation weiterer rpm-Pakete, nun aber bereits unter der Kontrolle FEDORAs selbst.
Abgesehen von seiner Funktion als Installer, kann SLINKY aber auch als einfache RESCUE-Floppy angesehen werden. Der wesentliche Aspekt dieser Facette von SLINKY ist ein aktueller LINUX-2.6-Kernel, mit all seinen Möglichkeiten, das System durch die Sicht des /proc-Filesystems zu erforschen. Für den zur Installation verwendeten Kernel stehen alle Module in kompilierter Form als iso9660-Image zur Verfügung.
Auf Grund der einfachen, geradlinigen Struktur, eignet sich SLINKY aber auch sehr gut als Demonstrations- und Lernobjekt, um unmittelbar zu sehen, wie die Installtion eines aktuellen UNIX-Systems ablaufen kann, welche Komponenten daran beteiligt sind und wie diese zusammenwirken.
Der Slinky Installer wurde ursprünglich im Zuge des RULE-Projekes erstellt.
The easiest way to get in touch with SLINKY is by using the SLINKY Boot Floppy. It is of no harm to try to boot with it and see what happens. Try it. You will be warned before any sereous action to take place like partitioning or formatting a disk. If you are actually going to install FEDORA with SLINKY you also need at least CD1 from FEDORA Core4 from the FEDORA Download Server or its mirrors. The name of the file is: FC4-i386-disc1.iso.
You can download the floppy image from http://www.fzk.at/SLINKY/slinky-0.5.03-disk1.img.
To create the real Slinky Boot Floppy use
to copy the image to a 1.44MB 3.5in. floppy. Under a none UNIX-like operating system you need a tool like rawrite to put the image to the floppy. The FEDORA-CDs provide this utility in the /dosutil directory.
If you have special hardware - and nearly everything exept a simple IDE-based x86-system with floppy, harddisk and CD-ROM might be special - you can use these modules to get SLINKY working with your hardware. Using modules is not that hard but as there are too many modules to fit on a single floppy you have to select the ones you need. If at least the CD-ROM is known by the SLINKY-install-kernel you can spend a blank CD and have them at hand all at once.
You can download the module image from http://www.fzk.at/SLINKY/slinky-0.5.03-modules.img.bz2.
Now that you downloaded the module image, you can uncompress it with the utility bzip2, loopback mount it and inspect its contents. This can be done by:
If you already have created the boot-kernel for Slinky creating the kernel-modules is easy:
$ cd /usr/src/linux $ su # make modules # make modules_install # exitIf everything worked fine this should have created /lib/modules/2.6.9 the kernel modules.
I cannot explain in short and in detail how to create a floppy with appropriate modules from all the available modules.
In very short:
If you cannot manage to get it to work please subscribe the RULE-Mailing List and ask there.
If you customized your floppy with modules you can now mount it under SLINKY at the mountpoint /lib/modules. Then the utility modprobe can load them, but you have to know theire names:
If you want to modify the Slinky Boot Floppy you can download the SLINKY devel-tarball, add your changes and create the boot floppy or a bootable CD from it. If you even want to change the basic tools like busybox or use another boot kernel, you can compile these components yourself and replace the parts from the devel-tar. As SLINKY is protected by the GPL it is necessary to provide any used source-code and instructions how to build it. But the sources of the LINUX-kernel and other tools are far too big to provide them from a RULE-server. We can only tell which version of sourcecode we used and point you to other download servers. But we provide any config-Files to compile these parts of SLINKY.
Location: .config
for LINUX-kernel 2.6.9
The LINUX-sources are ready
for download from The Linux Kernel Archives. You
would typically use a download server listed in The Linux Kernel
Archive Mirror System. In order to compile the kernel
do the following:
$ cd /usr/src $ ... download the kernel sources ... $ bzip2 -dc linux-2.6.9.tar.bz2 | tar -xvf - $ ln -sf linux-2.6.9 linux $ cd linux $ ... download the Slinky .config-file to this directory ... $ make oldconfig $ make bzImageIf everything worked fine this should have created /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage the LINUX-kernel. To use it with Slinky copy this kernel to your local copy of the devel-tree:
$ su # cp /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage _devel-tree_/base_files/vmlinuz_rule # _devel-tree_/makedisk.sh ... this creates the Slinky boot floppy ... # exit
Location: Develop tarball v0.5.03
If you want to create the Slinky boot floppy yourself you need the archive containing the develop files.
$ cd ~ $ mkdir SLINKY_devel $ cd SLINKY_devel $ ... download the archive ... $ su # bzip2 -dc slinky-devel-0.5.03.bz2 | tar -xvf - # exit
Location: devel-tree/base_files/vmlinuz-rule
The boot-kernel is primaly configured to be small
enough to fit on the boot-floppy, but also to be able
to use IDE discs and CDs, some network cards and NFS.
You find the .config at to_be_filled. The running kernel
shows its configuration in the file /proc/config.gz. Use
Location: devel-tree/base_files
Before booting the kernel some screens of text show
informations about SLINKY and what's going on.
Location: devel-tree/filesystem/bin/busybox
This is an old binary. By now I havn't got neither the source nor the config file for this binary.
This is an old binary. By now I havn't got neither the source nor the config file for this binary.
Location: devel-tree/filesystem
This is
the root filesystem as it is available while
installing with SLINKY. Thats the oldrood context.
It is totally placed in a ram-disk.
Location: devel-tree/base_files/syslinux.cfg
In order to install FEDORA Core 4 on your PC you need the rpm-packages contained on FC4 install media.
You can download the CD iso-images from the FEDORA
Download Server or its mirrors. The files are
named: FC4-i386-disc[1234].iso. You can
inspect the contents of these CD after downloding by
loopback-mounting the iso-images:
SLINKY provides several ways to access the rpm-packages from the CD iso-images. Choose your appropriate install-methode.
I You get | Source on harddisk | Source on CD I
I source | in | I
I from: | Fedora | rpms**) | Fedora I
I | iso*) | | iso I
I---------------------------------------------I
I local | iso | rpms | cdrom I
I---------|--------+-----------I--------------I
I nfs | nfsiso | nfsrpms I
I---------|--------+-----------I
I ftp | n/a | ftprpms I
I------------------------------I
*) ISOs are found, if placed in the top-level-directory of
a local harddisk-partion or nfs-export-directory.
**)RPMs are found, if placed in the $distri/RPMS directory.
Install methods when the rpms are locally available on the installation PC.
Install methods when the rpms are available in the LAN via NFS.
Install methods when the rpms are available in the LAN via FTP.
This function mounts the image if you install from an image.
The process of installing FEDORA is devided into many steps. Usually they are performed in a predefined order one after one. But whenever the Slinky-menue prompts you for the next already preselected task, you can change the order of preocessing by selecting another one. This can be usefull if you performed some task giving certain information but changed your mind afterwards. Then you don't have to start over again from booting the Slinky boot floppy, which is very time consuming, but simply can select this task and repeat it. Some tasks like selecting the keymap can be repeated at any time without the need to also repeat any later task but others like partitioning the harddisk cannot.
The two tasks sh_newroot and sh_oldroot can be selected at any time to get a shell in the new (that's the new installed /-root directory) or the old (that's Slinky's /-root directory) filecontext. The old filecontext is marked whith this file /_slinky_install_partition_ to make clear which is what.
The installer has activated 2 virtual ttys which can be switched by typing the usual <alt>-<F2> to get to the second tty and <alt>-<F1> to get back to the first tty (that's where the installer is running).
This function activates the swap-partition for the installation. Usually you have created a swap-partition on a harddisk and can use it now. If your PC has enough memory you can skip this action.
Former versions of Slinky provided a second floppy mainly containing a rather big rpm-binary to perform the actual installation of the rpm-archives. But busybox already contains a minimal rpm-binary which can be used to install the full featured rpm contained in the FEDORA distribution. Ignore the error-messages during this bootstrap.
We use the busybox fdisk function to partition the harddisk(s). There is nothing horrible about partitiong a harddisk, it's really a simple task. But make shure to not re-partition just a disk containing data that you still need. Usually you will not be able to access old data after re-parttioning.
Slinky boot floppy supports 2 filesystems:
Slinky boot floppy supports 4 keymaps:
Here you find a description to add the mapping you are used to: english deutsch.