Re: Ramdisk image HOWTO ???

[Greg Lindahl <lindahl cs virginia edu>]

> When RedHat Linux is installed on an Alpha system you boot a kernel floppy
> which then loads a ramdisk image.  I would like to modify or replace the
> ramdisk image so that I can use the memory resident configuration for other
> purposes.  Is there a HOWTO or other document somewhere that will tell me
> how to do this ???

If you look into the YARD package you'll get some clues. The ramdisk
is a compressed ex2 filesystem, so you need to dd it off the floppy,
then gunzip it, then dd it into one of the ramdisks, then mount it.

dd if=/dev/fd0 | gzcat | dd of=/dev/ram1
mkdir /mnt/ram1
mount /dev/ram1 /mnt/ram1

You'll find that on an alpha, there are just 2 files there, both
huge executable programs. I did cobble together a program which knew
enough to, given a machine name on the keyboard, configure the network
interface and dd over a compressed system disk. Nag me and I can 
cough up the exact source code.

-- g