Hi,

here are a few thoughts about how to create media images with Bering
uClibc. They may serve as thought food and a foundation for a healthy
discussion...

1. It is non-trivial to create images if you don't have a step by step
   HOWTO to follow. Currently we have these:

   http://leaf-project.org/doc/guide/bugrub.html
     (Bering User's Guide)

   http://leaf-project.org/doc/guide/bucu-ide.html
     (Bering uClibc User's Guide)

   http://leaf.lauft.net/bu-docs/buci-hdd.html
     (Originally intended for the Bering uClibc Installation Guide,
      written before finding out that HDD installation is not covered
      in the Installation Guide, but in the User's Guide. Go figure.)

   Composing all relevant information in a chapter of the BU Install
   Guide will probably the best way to improve this.

2. Bering uClibc releases ship as floppy (FDD) and cdrom (ISO) images,
   but not as harddisk (HDD) images. But the users of all other
   devices like HDDs, CF media, USB Sticks, Flash Disks, etc. have to
   build their images from scratch.

3. Building a FDD image can be easily done by a script. You basically
   do
        dd if=/dev/zero of=image
        mkdosfs image
        mcopy *.lrp image:
        syslinux image
   and you have a working image. You don't even need to be root.

4. On IRC, Mike brought up a few possibilities to deploy an image
   creator:
   a) A website where you can click together your custom BU image
      similar to http://rom-o-matic.net/5.2.6/
   b) A CD-ROM image with a booting version of linux on it, from which
      you can build BU images. I suggested to call this
      "LICK - LEAF Image Creator Knoppix" :)

5. Building a HDD image is difficult. You either
   a) do it as root on a real HDD device
   b) do a lot of evil "dd if= of= bs= count= skip= seek=" magic
      with harddisk and partition images to emulate userspace
      partition handling.
   You have to take into account CHS mappings, whether you want to use
   SYSLINUX or GRUB, whether you want multiple BU partitions there
   etc.

IMHO, some of this stuff would be nice to have, but of course someone
would have to implement it first :)

GruÃ,

Uli

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