4. Advanced Bootdisk Creation

4.1 Overview

Previous Sections of this document covered the basics of creating boot/root disks, and are applicable to nearly all kernels up to the present (2.0, the latest stable kernel).

Kernels 1.3.48+ involved a substantial rewrite of the ramdisk code, adding significant new capabilities. These kernels could automatically detect compressed filesystems, uncompress them and load them into the ramdisk on boot-up. Root filesystems could be placed on a second disk, and as of kernel 1.3.98 or so, ramdisks are dynamically expandable.

Altogether, these new capabilities mean that boot disks can contain substantially more than they used to. With compression, a 1722K disk may now hold up to about 3.5 megs of files. As anyone who has created bootdisks knows, much time is spent pruning down the file set and finding trimmed-down versions of files that will all fit in a small filesystem. With the new capabilities this is no longer such a concern.

Unfortunately, creating bootdisks to exploit these new features is slightly more difficult now. To build a compressed filesystem on a floppy, the filesystem has to be built on another device and then compressed and transferred to the floppy. This means a few more steps.

The basic strategy is to create a compressed root filesystem, copy the kernel to the floppy disk, tell the kernel where to find the root filesystem, then copy the compressed root filesystem to the floppy.

Here's a simple ASCII drawing of what the disk will look like:

|<--- zImage --->|<------ Compressed root filesystem -------->|
|________________|____________________________________________|
             Floppy disk space

Here are the steps to create the boot floppy:

4.2 Creating a root filesystem

The root filesystem is created pretty much the same way as outlined in Section 2.3 of this document. The primary difference is that you can no longer create a root filesystem directly on a floppy -- you must create it on a separate device larger than the floppy area it will occupy.

Choosing a device

In order to build such a root filesystem, you need a spare device that is large enough. There are several choices:

• If you have an unused hard disk partition that is large enough (several megabytes), this is the easiest solution. Alternatively, if you have enough physical RAM you can simply turn off swapping and build the filesystem in your swap partition. However, most people don't have a spare partition and can't afford to turn swapping off, so...
• Use a loopback device. A loopback device allows a disk file on an existing filesystem to be treated as a device. In order to use loopback devices you need specially modified mount and unmount programs. You can find these at:

          ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl:/pub/linux/util/mount-2.5X.tar.gz
  

  where X is the latest modification letter. One you've installed these special mount/umount binaries, create a temporary file on a hard disk with enough capacity (eg, /tmp/fsfile). Use this file name in place of DEVICE below. When you issue a mount command you must include the option "-o loop" to tell mount to use a loopback device. For example:

          mount -o loop -t ext2 /tmp/fsfile /mnt
  

  will mount /tmp/fsfile (via a loopback device) at the mount point /mnt. A 'df' will confirm this.
• A final option is to use the ramdisk (DEVICE = /dev/ram or /dev/ramdisk). In this case, RAM is used to simulate a disk drive. The ramdisk must be large enough to hold a filesystem of the appropriate size. Check your Lilo configuration file (/etc/lilo.conf) for a line like:

          RAMDISK_SIZE = nnn
  

  which determines how much RAM will be allocated.

After you've chosen one of these options, prepare the device with:

        dd if=/dev/zero of=DEVICE bs=1k 4096

This command zeroes out the device. This step is important because the filesystem on the device will be compressed later, so all unused portions should be filled with zeroes to achieve maximum compression.

Next, create the filesystem with:

        mke2fs /dev/hdb5 -m 0 DEVICE

(If you're using a loopback device, the disk file you're using should be supplied in place of this DEVICE. In this case, mke2fs will ask if you really want to do this; say yes.)

Then mount the device:

        mount -t ext2 DEVICE /mnt

Proceed as before, copying files into /mnt, as specified in Section 2.3.

Compressing the filesystem

After you're done copying files into the root filesystem, you need to copy it back out and compress it. First, umount it:

        umount /mnt

(Technically you can copy the filesystem without unmounting it first, but that's somewhat dangerous, and bad practice.)

Next, copy data off the device to a disk file. Call the disk file rootfs:

        dd if=DEVICE of=rootfs

Then compress it. Use the '-9' option of gzip for maximal compression:

        gzip -9 rootfs

This may take several minutes. When it finishes, you'll have a file rootfs.gz that is your compressed root filesystem.

If you're tight on disk space you can combine dd and gzip:

        dd if=DEVICE bs=1k | gzip -9 > rootfs.gz

4.3 Calculating the space

At this point, check the space to make sure both the kernel and the root filesystem will fit on the floppy. An "ls -l" will show how many bytes each occupies; divide by 1024 to determine how many blocks each will need. For partial blocks, be sure to round up to the next block.

For example, if the kernel size is 453281 bytes, it will need

        ceil(453281 / 1024) = 443

You must tell the kernel where on the floppy to find the root filesystem. Inside the kernel image is a ramdisk word that specifies where the root filesystem is to be found, along with other options. The word is defined in /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/kernel.setup.c and is interpreted as follows:

        bits  0-10:     Offset to start of ramdisk, in 1024 byte blocks
                        (This is ROOTBEGIN, calculated above)
        bits 11-13:     unused
        bit     14:     Flag indicating that ramdisk is to be loaded
        bit     15:     Flag indicating to prompt for floppy

(If bit 15 is set, on boot-up you will be prompted to place a new floppy disk in the drive. This is necessary for a two-disk boot set, discussed below in Section 4.5. For now, this will be zero.)

If the root filesystem is to begin at block 443, the ramdisk word is

        1BB (hex)       443 (decimal)     (bits 0-10)
     + 4000 (hex)       Ramdisk load flag (bit 14)
       ----------
     = 41BB (hex) 
     =16827 (decimal)

This ramdisk word will be set in the kernel image using the "rdev -r" command in the next section.

4.4 Copying files to the floppy

At this point you're ready to create the boot floppy. First copy the kernel:

        dd if=zImage of=/dev/fd0

Next, tell the kernel to find its root filesystem on the floppy:

        rdev /dev/fd0 /dev/fd0

Next, you have to set the ramdisk word in the kernel image now residing on the floppy. The ramdisk word is set using the "rdev -r" command. Using the figure calculated in 4.3:

        rdev -r zImage 16827

Finally, place the root filesystem on the floppy after the kernel. The dd command has a seek option that allows you to specify how many blocks to skip:

        dd if=rootfs.gz of=/dev/fd0 bs=1k seek=443

(The value 443 is ROOTBEGIN from Section 4.3.)

Wait for the floppy drive to finish writing, and you're done.

4.5 Making a two-disk set.

If you want more space, you can make a two-disk boot set. In this case, the first floppy disk will contain the kernel alone, and the second will contain the compressed root filesystem. With this configuration you can use a compressed filesystem of up to 1440K.

A two-disk set is created using a simple variation of the instructions above. First, you must set the ramdisk PROMPT flag to 1 to instruct the kernel to prompt and wait for the second floppy. The root filesystem will begin at byte 0 of the second floppy.

From section 4.3, the ramdisk PROMPT flag (bit 15) will be set to 1, and the ramdisk offset will be zero. In our example the new calculation would be:

                4000 (hex)      Ramdisk load flag (bit 14)
              + 8000 (hex)      Ramdisk prompt flag (bit 15)
              ------------
              = C000 (hex)
              =49152 (decimal)

which would be used in the 'rdev -r' calculation as before.

Follow the instructions of 4.4, above, but after issuing the 'rdev -r' command, put a new floppy in the drive and issue the command:

        dd if=rootfs.gz of=/dev/fd0

The seek option is not needed since the root filesystem starts at block zero.