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Linux Software

Linux on a Floppy: Intro to Mini Linux Distros 189

Posted by timothy from the floppies-how-quaint dept.
GonzoJohn writes: "If you've ever been stuck on the freeway with a flat tire and no jack, you know what it's like to have a Linux system crash and not have a boot disk. And although nearly every Linux distribution company asks you make a boot/recovery floppy when you install Linux for the first time, many users skip this important step. Out of the boot/recovery disk concept was born the Mini-Linux distribution." Read this article on Linux Orbit, with a brief intro to some of the mini-distros available.
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Linux on a Floppy: Intro to Mini Linux Distros More

Linux on a Floppy: Intro to Mini Linux Distros

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  • Gateways (Score:2, Interesting)

    by NWT ( 540003 )
    Yes, this is nice ... in case of a disk failure, simply flop in the floppy, reboot an your server is running again, at least for gateway services!

  • Floppy disks are so 1992 (Score:5, Informative)

    by red5 ( 51324 ) <gired5@gmail . c om> on Sunday March 17, 2002 @06:22AM (#3176344) Homepage Journal
    When I want a boot disk I use SuperRescue [kernel.org]. Nowa days every one has a cd burnner and CDRs are dirt cheap. Besides when was the last time you could find a blank floppy in less then 10 minutes?
    • Agreed. The days with resuce floppys are behind us. No matter how good they are, you can only fit very little on a floppy and it is a pain to work in a limited shell and not all the commands and utilities you are used to. Superrescue on the other hand gives you more than 1 GB on a compressed file system. If you have a bootable CDROM you really have no excuse for not using superrescue the next time you have problems.
      • Yeah right.

        *MY* development box consists of a floppy with the following:
        1) io.sys
        2) msdos.sys
        3) 4dos.com (renamed command.com)
        4) turboc 3.0 (with the IDE)
        5) Nasm
        6) symdeb

        Ofcourse, I have a dedicated mp3 box, another with all sorts of "visual"
        development crap, and yet another one running all the Unix desktop rivals out
        there.

        But I use my DOS box for meditation. Small is beautiful, small is good for
        you. I know the exact size of occupied diskspace, and I am proud to say that
        I can account for every byte of memory. How often do you do a memory grep to
        search for in-core strings? I do that on a daily basis, and it is very reassuring.

      • I just ordered a new machine last week (still waiting for it), and I decided to start a new trend. No floppy disk drive!!

        The last time I actually personally _needed_ to use a floppy disk was installing Debian on a 486 with no cdrom. For older machines, you can' t beat the 3 disk net install. This, however, is 2002. We have cheap burners, media that costs no more, if not less than floppy disks, and BIOS's that boot from CD as a standard feature.

        Why has the floppy survived this long? I work at a helpdesk position at my University between classes for extra cash...I've seen firsthand the horrors of the fragility of this ancient storage media. Ever lost your thesis due to lost clusters, bad sectors, etc? (But it worked at home this morning...)

        Please: Consider abandoning the floppy!

        -Ben
        • We have cheap burners, media that costs no more, if not less than floppy disks, and BIOS's that boot from CD as a standard feature.

          It is still not common to find a motherboard with a BIOS that will boot from a SCSI CDROM. That is why I still need a floppy drive from time to time. Am I just choosing the wrong motherboards? Or are you just talking about IDE CDROM drives? (IDE? How vulgar!)
        • Why bother abandoning them? It costs maybe $6, and I wouldn't be using the room it takes up anyway. I rarely use it, but on the off chance that I need it, it's there.

    • not every computer has a CD (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      CD drives are a waste of space on anything except desktop machines.
      • CD drives are a waste of space on anything except desktop machines.

        No Floppy drives are a wast eof space on every computer.
        You can easly slip in a laptop style cd-rom drive onto a 1U server.
        I't takes up so little space that it dosen't nead it's own drive bay.
        A floppy OTOH neads it's own drive bay.
        • Actually there are quite a few servers using laptop style floppy drives too. We have a couple of Hewlett Packard servers in our server room which use that kind of drives.
          • Cool I guess.
            All I know is that the I can just beraly rember the last time I use a floppy for anything. What I do remember is swearing under my breath the whole time about how slow it was.
            • ...And they break too easily. I've wondered sometimes if the makers of floppy disks have lowered the quality of the disks over the last 10 years. I hardly remember any disks breaking back in the days when I used the Amiga 500 and 1200. Then I didn't even have a harddrive, just around a thousand floppies. Sure some disks broke, but nowadays every disk seem to break after just a couple of uses.

              • Re:Low quality floppies (Score:3, Insightful)

                by mgv ( 198488 )
                've wondered sometimes if the makers of floppy disks have lowered the quality of the disks over the last 10 years.

                Yes, quality has fallen because:

                1) Who is going to pay a premium for a good floppy?

                2) Data density has increased so each bit has a weaker field and smaller footprint than the old 720 Kb disks - easier to demagnetise or scratch.

                Michael
      • Not every computer has a floppy drive!

        I've got several old cd drives around somewhere, but not a single floppy drive! I guess it's because floppies are floppies, they've stayed the same. CD drives, however, have constantly increased their reading speeds, therefore we have bought new drives every now and then. It is much more likely a computer has a CD than a floppy. I don't think I've used a floppy for several years! Except when installing Debian on my 486 laptop, but that's an exeption...
      • Nowa days every one has a cd burnner and CDRs are dirt cheap. Besides when was the last time you could find a blank floppy in less then 10 minutes

      Great! I'll just chuck my firewall and fileserver boxen on a landfill and buy some newer hardware then!

      Thanks for the info, but some of us like to keep hardware in service until the magic smoke gets out (for environmental as well as cost reasons), and a decent boot floppy is an integral part of that. "Buy new hardware!" is a Microsoft strategy, and that's one of the reasons why I've given up on their upgrade-or-become-unsupported OS's.

      • Thanks for the info, but some of us like to keep hardware in service until the magic smoke gets out(for environmental as well as cost reasons), and a decent boot floppy is an integral part of that.

        You shouldn't have to get all new hardware to read a cd even my OLD 486 sx/20 could do that.
        Plus a cd is AFAIK a LOT more reliable then a floppy.
    • Actually, I keep a box of blank floppies right next to my dev machine for just such reasons. Because I do dev on both windows and linux and have been too cheap to buy a CD burner, OS boot disks are key.

      For those who are still doubting their worth, I once tried tripple booting Win98SE, RH5.2, and BEOS 4.3...everything went great for the first day, but when I woke up the next morning my Master Boot Record was hammered beyond repair. I didn't know about SuperRescue back then (did it even exist?) so I ended up having to boot from a DOS 6.1 install disk and do a format /MBR and work from there. I've never had a repeat of losing the MBR, but I've also never been without the boot disks just in case.

      BTW, MOD the parent post up as informative! I'll shamefully admit I had never even heard of SuperRescue until I read his post. I could have used it back then.

      • For those who are still doubting their worth, I once tried tripple booting Win98SE, RH5.2, and BEOS 4.3...everything went great for the first day, but when I woke up the next morning my Master Boot Record was hammered beyond repair. I didn't know about SuperRescue back then (did it even exist?) so I ended up having to boot from a DOS 6.1 install disk and do a format /MBR and work from there. I've never had a repeat of losing the MBR, but I've also never been without the boot disks just in case.

        If you had a redhat install floppy around you could have stuck that in and typed:
        "vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1"
        That would cause you to boot the kernel on the install floppy and use /dev/hda1asyou root partition.
      • that'll be fdisk /mbr, not format /mbr.
    • Nowa days every one has a cd burnner and CDRs are
      dirt cheap. Besides when was the last time you could find a blank floppy in less then 10 minutes?

      I agree. I use LNX-BBC [lnx-bbc.org], which fits on a credit card sized CD. Meaning you can carry it round in your wallet or whatever, and have it at hand for all occasions.
      It has an X window system, which even includes some games (to play when you are waiting for that fscking fsck!), and a full browser [browsex.com].

      What is really useful, beyond the usual suite of maintanance/repair tools, is the comprehensive network tools. This is why it can be quite useful to carry around. It means you can put it into a windows box (e.g. on a windows only network) and use it for debugging a network problems. Or l337 activities.......
      • Indeed. I'm constantly surprised how much stuff the LNX-BBC guys can fit in ~50 megs. Except for emacs and man pages, the image has pretty much anything you could reasonably ask for.
        Personally, I hacked the iso to boot to win95 dos rather than isolinux, then added loadlin and ntfsdos to the filesystem. All the same great Linux functionality, and now I can use it to fix win9x boxes and bypass security on NT/2k boxes. I never leave home without it.
    • Nowa days every one has a cd burnner and CDRs are dirt cheap. Besides when was the last time you could find a blank floppy in less then 10 minutes?

      1%warren looks at his box - gosh! no cd burner! Picks up blank floppy from pile under his monitor stand - gosh! took ~1 second! Sigh... I'm a decade behind the times.

    • Besides when was the last time you could find a blank floppy in less then 10 minutes?

      As opposed to trying to find a specific CDR in a huge pile of them, in less than 10 minutes?

    • I work in a computer lab with around 30 Pentium systems that don't have CD-ROM drives at all, so boot floppies are the only way for us. And for a simple network troubleshooting disk, for example, why bother with a CD (and the potential for wasted space) when you can put your kernel and drivers all on one floppy?

    • So true. The Debian install CD no 1 is a rescue disk in itself, so there is no need to create an extra floppy. If you have a Debian cd you can always just boot from that and get back up and running.
    • While SuperRescue is fantastic, it does not elimiate boot diskettes becuase quite a few machines can't boot a CD (disabled), and when the CD drive breaks, you've got to have a fall back.

  • Freesco (Score:2, Informative)

    by popeydotcom ( 114724 )
    Is what I use as my gateway. Boots off a floppy, runs on this crappy little 486, and firewalls me (to a certain degree) from a lot of crap out there.. Very useful for people with multiple PCs and a cable connection. Easy to setup and configure. Their website [freesco.org] has a download of the floppy image, a manual and extras (e.g. drivers for network cards). Worth checking out.
    • If space is tight, give v7upgrade a try, the unix 7 binaries takes insanely little diskspace compared to other versions, i made a rootdisk about 150k (gziped) with almost all needed tools (some still need porting) had to write init from scratch and such but it looks promising for 386/486 systems as these binaries don't eat ram.

  • Lunix crashes (Score:2, Insightful)

    by pvera ( 250260 )
    [lame windows weenie troll starts]
    You mean that Linux crashes?

    What is next? Blue screen's of death?
    [/lame windows weenie troll ends]

    The truth of the matter is that in a Windows NT or 2000 server you can boot the box off the install CD and run a repair utility. freeBSD can be installed off two floppies and over the network, and it cannot be that hard to add to the floppy images enough functionality to add a repair program.

    • I've tried to use that Windows 2000 boot-off-the-CD repair utility and it has consistently failed to repair any problems I've had.

      To fix problems, I've had to boot from a floppy... but wait... no generic floppy boot is possible with W2K. To get a boot disk that would work, so I could get into DOS, so I could fix the problems, I had to download one from here [bootdisk.com].

      Being able to boot off a floppy can be really handy sometimes.

    • Re:Lunix crashes (Score:2, Informative)

      by red5 ( 51324 )
      The truth of the matter is that in a Windows NT or 2000 server you can boot the box off the install CD and run a repair utility.

      So can all the linux distros I've tried.

      freeBSD can be installed off two floppies and over the network, and it cannot be that hard to add to the floppy images enough functionality to add a repair program.

      Again nothing that's not possible under your standard Linux distro.
      Just because you don't know how doesn't make it impossible
      • Hell, the first thing I said is I am a windows weenie :-P

        (actually I am losing my faith on Windows, and BSD is welcoming me with open arms)

        Yeah, its one of those things that would be nice if they make them more visible.
        • It's all good.
          I do get a lot of anti-Linux FUD from the BSD crowd (they just stole the code from BSD ...)
          So I'm a little touchy.
    • you got a +1 insightful for what?
      every linux distro cince 1998 has been able to boot from the install CD and choose a rescue option.

      Only those that know most nothing about linux would think you require a special "rescue or boot floppy" to recover from a hardware crash.

      NT/2000 if you dont have an emergency recovery floppy then a rebuild is horribly painful. it's easier to format the partition/reinstall NT/ reinstall tape backup software/ restore from last backup. Linux? simply boot from the install CD, mount the hadr drive partition that is your root and then do a simple tar from your tape backup, or 99.997% of the time you have a linux "crash" tell lilo to use your backup kernel and reinstall it's self (if you had a head crash on the boot sector)

      NT? you cant do any of the above. no way to boot to a minimal OS to do low lever rapairs... NT just isnt advanced enough to have this feature yet.
      • Have 2 paritions, First the OS, Second the software/home partition. Ghost your First OS, burn ghost image onto a CD. Then if you have to restore, boot off a dos floppy, cd driver loaded, and ghost your OS back onto your HD.

        I have my main drive as a Win98/WinXP/Linux. After I update WinXP with all my software, updates patches, I ghost it. Then I have a perfect image of WinXP fresh with updates. Dont have to sit through a re-install every again.

  • Remember September 11th? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why anybody would want to use a foreign OS like Linux instead of supporting their country and using an American OS like Windows is beyond me. If Osama bin Laden knew anything about computers, you can bet he'd be a Linux user. Hint to the clueless: the terrorist attacks hit our economy hard. Boycotting a Godly, moral American company like Microsoft is pretty much a second wave of the 9/11 attacks. Don't be hateful. Support your country.

  • Best recovery disk! (Score:5, Informative)

    by awptic ( 211411 ) <infiniteNO@SPAMcomplex.com> on Sunday March 17, 2002 @06:37AM (#3176360)
    The tomsrtbt boot disk. IMO, is by far the best rescue disk available. In 1.44 megs of space they've managed to pack over 160 common utilities, and that's not including the kernel modules! You can grab a copy of the boot image at http://www.toms.net/rb/ [toms.net]
    This thing has saved my ass several times.
    • No support for Reiserfs! Tom says he will work on it sometime though. My favorite at the moment is Ramfloppy [freshmeat.net] - has nowhere near the same amout of utilities, & no networking support though. To fit everything in these days, you'd need to go to two floppys. The author of Paud [sourceforge.net] said that people preferred a single floppy & wouldn't use Paud if he moved to two.
  • In this context fli4l [fli4l.de] should be mentioned. It's an amzing single-floppy distribution and while primarily targeting on router/firewall tasks it is very extensible. The reason it is not so very well known is probably the fact that most of it's documentation is in German. But it's definitely worth a look. Also check this [fli4l.de].
  • I cannot believe that the article did not mention the fli4l project, which is a great isdn/dsl router on a single floppy. It additional features lots of additional packages. Great distribution! (I am just a happy user) http://www.fli4l.de NikWest
  • I have nearly allways with me a disk with Hal 91 [tripod.com] so that if I talk to none-belivers or ppl that simply doesn't know about Linux, I can show them the power of Linux!

    ... Well, actually, most ppl seem to think I've booted into Dos anyway, and/or complain about the lack of a GUI and stuff, but I once in a while, there are actually ppl who think I'm some sort of über-hacker when I say to them with a monotone and mystical voice:

    "No, it's not DOS.. It's Leenooks.. It's a superior operationsystem that have now taken over all your hardware.. resistance is futile.."

  • Try this (Score:3, Funny)

    by sinserve ( 455889 ) on Sunday March 17, 2002 @06:53AM (#3176376)
    If you've ever been stuck on the freeway with a flat tire and no jack, you
    know what it's like to have a Linux system crash and not have a boot disk.

    I know what it was like to have TWO flat tires on a country road, with nothing but
    a $1500 Presario lap top. It was "Redneck Rampage", those fuckers even took my boots.
  • For a firewall sitting between my LAN and my cable modem, I use LRP [linuxrouter.org]. Runs on anything from a 486 upwards, off a floppy. Once you've finished configuring the floppy (takes between 5 mins and 3 hours, depending on how experienced you are with Linux and networking), you can simply write-protect it, and you have a completely uncrackable system. If someone breaks into it, just reboot the computer and it'll load everything back into ramdisk. It can also act as a dhcp and dns server. Check here [steinkuehler.net]and here [steinkuehler.net] for documentation.
  • Most modern distributions come with a rescue system on the installation CD.
    The trouble with floppies is that they are just too unreliable to make a decent rescue system.

    b.
  • If you want to make your custom Linux disc, take a look at this step-by-step howto:
    http://wam.umd.edu/~kefferb/floppy.html [umd.edu]
  • I have been using Tomsrtbt [toms.net] for years now. It had some glitches when the ext2 filesystem was extended, but these were fixed a while back. However, I use ext3 as my filesystem because I can still use Toms Root/Boot. There is a whole collection of 'extras' - mostly kernel modules and so forth, that you can use to create a customised boot disk. You can even rebuild it under itself - no other installation necessary.

    And lets not forget BusyBox - which makes most of these distributions possible. Even Red Hat boot disks use BusyBox these days.

    Ra for Tom.

    Cheers, Andy!

  • Ripped from my bookmarks: other distros (Score:5, Informative)

    by Cally ( 10873 ) on Sunday March 17, 2002 @07:20AM (#3176405) Homepage
    Some other fits-onna-floppy distros; many of these are security-focused, firewall-appliance type efforts. Disclaimer, this list is of stuff I /want; to check out when I get the time: I'vfe no idea how good or bad they are, beyond Theo's famous comment about entrusting the most important piece of one's network to the most unreliable piece of hardware in modern computers (approximately). Some of them may actually NOT be floppy-distros, I need to clean up these bookmarks... jesus where did the time go... *sigh*

  • Rescues more than Linux (Score:5, Interesting)

    by saihung ( 19097 ) on Sunday March 17, 2002 @07:21AM (#3176407)
    I've used floppy distros to rescue Windows boxes for more often than I've used them for rescuing linux. NT password crackers, disk utils, tiny editors, you name it - I used to carry a syslinux disk around with me at our all-NT shop just in case, and by the time I left I wasn't the only one using them.

    • I work in a Windows shop myself, and am wondering, what single-floppy distro do you use that has NTFS support? I only have the magical NT password changer (great tool btw).

      If I had time, I was going to try to hack NTFS into tomsrtbt, since I really like that distro myself.

  • Business Card CDR (30mb) Linux Distro (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Khopesh ( 112447 ) on Sunday March 17, 2002 @07:28AM (#3176418) Homepage Journal
    All the rave, those floppy disk linux distros. Over the past few years, I've learned to love tomsrtbt (Tom's RootBoot) [toms.net].

    Then, last year, I found some Business Card CDRs [google.com], which hold 30-50mb and fit in your wallet.

    Naturally, I wanted a super-utility boot disk. My ideal was high; mix tomsrtbt with a standard Win98 boot disk (essential for flashing) and a few other tools. Multiboot? Now there's a tough subject. Even with the best guide to making bootable cdroms [nu2.nu] I could find, it was hopelessly difficult.

    When I saw this post on Slashdot, I knew I had to post this little story. In researching it, I actually found an answer to the question I wanted to pose to all of you; does anybody know of a linux distribution for these business card cdrs.

    LNX-BBC [lnx-bbc.org] is just that. Anybody tried it? Anybody know of another one? Anybody made a multi-boot linux/dos businesscard cdr? ...I want the iso!
    • Wow you saved me having to write a post about this :) There is another great one i use called lbt (linuxcare bootable toolkit - which was the precursor of LNX-BBC) and you can find it here: http://lbt.linuxcare.com/ [linuxcare.com]. The other distribution is demolinux [demolinux.org] which needs a 700meg cd, but contains a whole operating system including KDE and Gnome that runs off the cd.
    • Have you looked at the Linuxcare Bootable Toolbox? It's a distro that can be used on a credit-card sized CD. I only found out about it a couple of days ago, and I've been pretty impressed so far. Here's some linkage: http://lbt.linuxcare.com" [linuxcare.com]

    • Re:Business Card CDR (30mb) Linux Distro (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > Anybody made a multi-boot linux/dos businesscard cdr?

      I did. It's actually really simple; put LOADER.BIN, DISKEMU1X.BIN and DISKEMU.CMD into the root directory of your CD, create a directory BOOTDISK where you put all those floppy images (my CD contains those: W98 bootdisk, MemTest86, Grub, PXE flash disks for Intel and 3com, Recovery Is Possible, TECHW0RM, a DOS network bootdisk, a floppy to reset the NT admin password; the rest, about 35MB, are filled with lots of tools). You then have to adapt DISKEMU.CMD to show a menu where you can select those images and finally call

      mkisofs -no-emul-boot -eltorito-boot LOADER.BIN -hide boot.catalog -v -N -l -no-iso-translate -relaxed-filenames -J -R . > /tmp/bootcd.iso

      to create the actual ISO. I can't give you mine (well, perhaps a stripped-down version), as it contains non-free software, and a few of those disks contain a German DOS, but I can help you with creating your own.

    • A business card-sized CDR would be awesome, but I can't use it. My CDR tray doesn't have a spindle in the center, so how would I center the thing in the tray? Or is the disc the same size as a mini-disc? I just noticed this now, but my CDR tray has a smaller circular indentation that appears to be the same size as a mini-disc.
  • Who needs a floppy disk, when you can boot your machine off of PAPER?
    Yes folks, my very own FSMOS is able to do just that.

    To demonstrate the amount of hackishnes envolved, I used the following off
    the shelf concepts -- so not to lock you guys into propierty stuff:

    1) A finite set of input symbols (you can increase this all you want, but the clock
    cycles are inversely proportional to it.)

    2) A finite set of internal states (yes, you can have as many internal states as you want.
    TIMTOWTDI, same problems as 1 though)

    3) A finite set of out put symbols (it will "say" anything you want :-)

    4) a highly polished initial state, s0 (the first one is on the house.)

    5) a next-state function (so you can tell it where you want it to go today.)

    6) your very own mouth piece, an output function (yay)

    You just have to do a little configuration, and make sure you have balanced edges and you
    are good to go.

    { the above lame joke was brought to you by, Star Fruit Brust, it is juuuuuuicy, and by
    Ashcroft and Gereld, working for a bent over you }
    • Who needs a floppy disk, when you can boot your machine off of PAPER?
      Yes folks, my very own FSMOS is able to do just that.

      Prior art man. 30 years ago I used to boot a PDP-8 off punched paper tape. Just load that tape into the reader and let it fly. 20 minutes later and the computer was ready to rip, all 4K of 12 bit work memory ripped to go.

  • The vital thing is actually finding the disk in the first place after a system crash! When you have hundreds of disks in many boxes - where do people suggest would be the best place to keep your Linux boot disk?

  • I used trinux (Score:2, Troll)

    by Yarn ( 75 )
    for almost everything. It is designed as a security testing tool, but I found its "download and install into ram" abilities so useful I had it set up to ghost machines, repair stuff, set up an emergency mail server...

    As well as stress test the IDS we were writing. Brilliant.
  • Comes with a business card sized Sysadmin CD. Pop it into your wallet, have it anywhere. You can buy blank business card CDs and burn your own.
  • format A: /s
    copy edit.* A:
    copy fdisk.* A:
    copy format.* A:
    copy scandisk.* A:

    Wow... my very own MSDOS SDCRK [that's super-duper-crash-recovery-kit for you laymen].

    Tom
    • how exactly are you mounting your cd-rom drive with these utilities? a floppy of this type is basically useless for anything other than formatting/changing partitions. this reminds me of the win95 recovery disk that doesn't have cdrom support. in order to re-install win95 on a machine i have to use a win98 boot floppy to get cdrom drivers loaded, then put in the win95 cdrom to install it. didn't every machine have cdrom when win95 was released?
      • In my case I have my win2k installer on my second hard disk. So all I need is to be able to boot up.

        In the old days I'd copy a couple of .SYS files along with MSCDEX.exe [is that what its called? its been a while...]. All in all I could have my mouse+cd+disk utils all on one 720kb disk.

        Tom
  • I find the bootable CD-ROM distributions more useful. They contain things like X with a window manager and web browser, net connectivity via ethernet or dialup, XFS and Reiser support, and other useful goodies that would never fit on a floppy distro. And CD-ROM drives are dirt cheap, and nearly as pervasive as floppy drives.

    My two favorites are related branches, LNX-BBC [lnx-bbc.org], a spinoff from Linuxcare's bootable toolkit, found here [linuxcare.com]. Both have advantages over the other, and will fit on credit-card sized CD's, so you can fit 'em in your wallet (try that with a floppy :-)

    Another cool one, which also has the advantage of letting folks try a more full-bodied Linux without installing anything, is DemoLinux [demolinux.org]. It even contains StarOffice on a fully self-contained bootable CD-ROM. Very cool.

    -me

  • SuSe LiveEval (Score:1, Informative)

    by davids-world.com ( 551216 )
    Suse has a bootable 'LiveEval' CD ROM (available as ISO [suse.com]). It has everything one needs; config is saved on some HD partition (this does not destroy anything). Of course, it won't boot as fast a floppy-based solution does.
  • http://sunsite.dk/mulinux/ - it says it all. Small, functional, can do really many things - and runs off a floppy (or several of them, to be exact). Give it a try...

  • Yet another... (Score:2, Informative)

    by O2n ( 325189 )
    Yet another BBC ("bootable business card") cd is maintained by redhat.de (german subsidiary).

    Although aimed mainly at redhat users, it's pretty comprehensive and you can debug/fiddle with your other partitions (win32, ntfs). It's fairly up-to-date, also.

    Grab it here [redhat.de]

  • Ramfloppy (Score:3, Informative)

    by 1%warren ( 78514 ) <<wardon> <at> <xtra.co.nz>> on Sunday March 17, 2002 @08:58AM (#3176534) Homepage
    My favorite. Kernel 2.2.17, support for ext3 & reiserfs (tomsrtbt doesn't support reiserfs, can be hacked to do ext3), & a customised Midnight Commander that can be used to extract rpms & debs. Includes mcedit, far more "intuitive" than vi/emacs.

    Details [ibiblio.org]
    Contents [ibiblio.org]
    Self extracting archive [ibiblio.org] - run unzip on it to extract it linux.

  • FloppyFW is a linux distribution on a floppy that acts as a packet filtering firewall. I have floppyfw machines set up both at home and at work--one's a 486-50, the other's a Pentium 60--that protect my machines. It's great for those of us that have old computers with floppy disk drives sitting in the basement, and have to protect a computer or two running Winblows. http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw [zelow.no]

  • why? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    why aren't floppies dead? why? why must the pain go on?

  • PicoBSD (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Fweeky ( 41046 ) on Sunday March 17, 2002 @09:35AM (#3176578) Homepage
    Don't forget the BSD's have things like this too. Tsk, anyone would think the BSD's and the Linux's aren't on speaking terms or something :)

    /usr/src/release/picobsd/

    PICOBSD(8) FreeBSD System Manager's Manual PICOBSD(8)

    NAME

    picobsd - floppy disk based FreeBSD system

    DESCRIPTION

    picobsd is a script which can be used to produce a minimal implementation
    of FreeBSD (historically called PicoBSD) which typically fits on one
    floppy disk, or can be downloaded as a single image file from some media
    such as CDROM, flash memory, or through etherboot.

    The boot media (typically a floppy disk) contains a boot loader and a
    compressed kernel which includes a memory file system. Depending on the
    media, it might also contain a number of additional files, which can be
    updated at run time, and are used to override/update those in the memory
    file system.

    • Re:PicoBSD (Score:3, Informative)

      by TandyMasterControl ( 136043 )
      Why do I have to "not forget" that the BSD's have something Linux has, in this case a floppy based version of bsd? Is there actually something in it for me or is it just so you don't feel bad about BSD?


      I've looked into Pico BSD and the subject of floppy based BSD off and on for a couple of years. There's nothing going on there -or last I looked it was still dead.

      Pico BSD is a defunct project and there were no surviving offspring. It's not being maintained, as the downloadable images all date from 1998. So it's unsafe in any setting you need a UNIX in, and pretty much useless unless you just get a thrill from loading a UNIX style OS from a bootable medium the rest of the world rememebers best as a vector for DOS viruses and typing 'ls' and marvelling at yourself. To handle and touch an OS this far fallen into decay and death has to be a kind of antiquarian's fetish. Before you sit down to type at the console, you should be sure to put on some harpsichord music and your favorite mauve satin smoking jacket. Atop your monitor should stand a seven armed silver candelabra and the room should be dark and cold as a tomb. Use a Ouija board to generate passwords.
      Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
      As the leaves that were crisped and sere -
      As the leaves that were withering and sere;
      And I cried: "It was surely October
      On this very night of last year
      That I journeyed -I journeyed down here! -
      That I brought a dread burden down here -
      On this night of all nights in the year,
      Ah, what demon hath tempted me here?
      Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber -
      This misty mid region of Weir -
      Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
      This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

      I've checked for a floppy version of OpenBSD. Mr. De Raadt has expressed an unwillingness for OBSD to be floppyized. Some people were talking about it anyway but there was nothing going on, nothing to use. Since you are into BSD and haven't mentioned it I will assume that the floppy based Open BSD is still sharing a bunk with OBSD .iso's on the Pullman car of sweet maybes rolling down track 29 to Ulalume Terminal.

      With Linux on the other hand there are a number of robust open projects and commercial products that answer to the description of "floppy based UNIX router, that is actively maintained". I don't have to imagine them as still living, and harangue strangers about not forgetting them. They manage to attract a fair amount of attention to themselves without strident evangelizing.

  • Speaking of mini-distros, check out dyne-bolic at http://lab.dyne.org/DyneBolic

    Note that it is presently Alpha.

    It's a distro that boots off of the CD and gives you access to tools for making cool visuals set to music using FreeJ, or running a webcam off of hasciicam.

    Check it out, and I know they could use a hand getting some of the USB camera stuff going.
  • Would be handy actually.

    Boot floppy, brings up network, contacts backup server, partitions disks, creates filesystems and begins restoring all the data from the backup server.

  • Nobody's mentioned zip disks (Score:3, Informative)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Sunday March 17, 2002 @10:45AM (#3176672)
    I used to use Zip disks back in the day when you could reasonably do viable a viable installation (one with development tools, editors, networking, etc etc) on 100MB. The "rescue" disk and the drive wsas portable to whatever machine it was needed on, reasonably fast and was a writable medium for saving configs or other data if it was determined that the original disk was dead (yes, there was actually 10-20 MB of FREE disk space).

    It seems like the last time I tried to make a boot disk this way I couldn't get a basic install to fit on 100MB.

    Removable IDE sleds sound the ideal solution, but so many boxes don't have room for them. A bootable CD seems like the most portable, although it lacks a writable filesystem.

  • Linux Photo player boot???? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jlrowe ( 69115 ) on Sunday March 17, 2002 @10:47AM (#3176680)
    Does anyone know how to accomplish this?

    I am currently scanning very old (50-100 years)family photos for distribution to the family on CD. I want to create a CD that is bootable and will go from a cold machine to an X11 desktop and immediatly start doing a slide show of the photos on the CD.

    As a bonus, it looks like to me that a CD like this would be a great way for Linux to get exposure running business slideshows or product demos.

    Therefore, it would have to logon as root (?), autoconfigure X11, and start playing. In addition, I would also put a 'autorun.inf' and copy of 'iview32' (win32 viewer) on it for those who shove it in and use with Winddows.

    The basic requirements I can think of are:

    1. All opensource/freeware
    2. Linux Autoboot, Configure, Play etc.
    3. Smallest disk space requirement, saving CD space for the pictures.
    4. Ease of use. Might be nice to break out of the slide show and view pictures under user control.

    Any ideas on what to use?
    Which of these distros being discussed to use?
    What Linux program will do the slide show?
    How to autoconfig X11 if the distro doesn't?
    How to autologon?

    • Re:Linux Photo player boot???? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Sunday March 17, 2002 @11:41AM (#3176779) Homepage
      Therefore, it would have to logon as root (?),

      Why? what reason do you need to add the overhead of login and user systems? what do you even need a shell for?

      autoconfigure X11, and start playing.

      again why? do you really need X? why cant you use microwindows or PicoGui? both of which are 9000% smaller and easier to use in a small environment than any X11 release. they both use the Framebuffer interface so will work on 99.667% of all current hardware and 40% of the old junk.

      In addition, I would also put a 'autorun.inf' and copy of 'iview32' (win32 viewer) on it for those who shove it in and use with Winddows.

      Fair, that means your CD has to be iso9660 filesystem. (Yes you CAN have a EXT2 cdrom... I've made them) you cant use Joilet.. Why? because you need to keep your kernel small, and your ram filesystem small (your entire operating environment has to run in ram) a kernel,filesystem,busybox and picoGUI with a custom slideshow app is easy to stuff on a floppy let along in ram. use MicroWindows if you want that homey X11 look and feel. Or better yet screw the Gui... use a simple C app written with the SDL library.. There's no reason to bloat up your project with a useless GUI (Unless you want to add a fill in this form and click here to dial and send me your info.... bla bla bla...)

      Reccomendation? learn C, learn SDL (only a little needed!) and not only show off something that is 100% impossible with any current microsoft product but you also can brag that you completely designed it.

      finally, if you write it in SDL only, and write the C app correctly, you can ignore putting a silly viewer app on there, and run the C app under windows after you compiled it under the free windows Gcc... Same views under both linux AND winblows... Something else that cannot be done with any Microsoft product.

  • Some summaries of Linux floppy distros (Score:5, Informative)

    by rtos ( 179649 ) on Sunday March 17, 2002 @11:37AM (#3176767) Homepage
    Here's a quick list of some floppy distros that you may not have heard about (and some that you have) with summaries. Tom's Root Boot is definitely one to check out. I've heard Coyote is good too, but haven't tried it myself. Links and summaries are brought to you by Freshmeat.net [freshmeat.net]. Enjoy.
    Herbix [dyndns.org] : "Herbix is a Linux server that fits on a floppy. It supports ipchains and can serve FTP, HTTP, IRC, DHCP, SMTP, and IDENT."

    Mike's Jukebox Distro [michaelchaney.com] : "Mike's Jukebox Distro is really just a floppy image that you add to a CD full of mp3's, using it as the El-Torito boot image. It has a complete Linux kernel and madplay, along with BusyBox. A simple shell script uses "find" to get a list of all mp3's on the CD, and it then plays each of them in order. tty3 is used for the player output, tty1, and tty2 have shells to allow the user to "play" while it's playing music."

    RIMiRadio [rimboy.com] : "RIMiRadio is a floppy disk distro of Linux and an Icecast server."

    floppyfw [zelow.no] : "Floppyfw is a router and simple firewall on one single floppy. It uses Linux basic firewall capabilities, and has a very simple packaging system. It is perfect for masquerading and securing networks on ADSL and cable lines, using both static IP, DHCP, and PPPoE, and provides a simple installation, which usually involves editing of only one file on the floppy."

    BBIagent Router [bbiagent.net] : "BBIagent is a single floppy Linux-based router for sharing a broadband Internet connection. It also serves as a firewall to prohibit intruders from accessing your LAN. You can create your own BBIagent router software (a diskette file image) on our server based on your hardware configuration (NICs) and connection protocol (e.g. PPPoE, PPPoATM or DHCP). It is very easy to install and use."

    Coyote Linux [coyotelinux.com] : "Coyote Linux is a single floppy distribution for people who have an Internet connection that they wish to share with other computers on a LAN. In addition to connection sharing, it also provides firewall services to help protect the internal network. The goal of the Coyote project is to make it as quick and easy as possible to share an Internet connection."

    Tom's RootBoot [toms.net] : "rtbt is the most Linux on one floppy disk for rescue recovery panic and emergencies, contains tools to keep in your shirt pockets, is useful whenever you can't use a hard drive and contains about 100 rescue tools."

    Pocket Linux [pocket-lnx.org] : "Pocket Linux is an almost minimal, one floppy linux system designed to quickly convert PC workstation into secure linux-based workstation using ssh to connect to remote host (other networking clients are also supported). It supports bootp for determining host IP and other network parameters (there's also manual configuration possible, but bootp is recommended). In addition to workstations equipped with a network card (ethernet or arcnet), you can also use Pocket Linux on a PC equipped with a modem. Modem is automatically detected and then PPP connection is made."

    Trinux [sourceforge.net] : "Trinux is a minimal Linux distribution that boots from a single floppy or CD-ROM, loads its packages from an FTP/HTTP server, IDE filesystem, or additional floppies, and runs entirely in RAM. Trinux contains the latest versions of popular network security tools that can be used to conduct security research, analyze network traffic, and perform vulnerability testing."

    Hopefully this list is helpful to those of you just starting to think about tiny distros.

  • Here is my web [umd.edu] page detailing some of the steps I go through to create a linux on a disk. I am working on putting more details on soon but I think it still gives a good introduction.
  • this is not hard.

    ps, substitue your running kernel version for "2.4.18" in the above.
  • I'm a little disappointed to see that fd linux didn't make it in to the review... fd linux (available from fdlinux.com) was created by a friend of mine (with a tidge of help from myself) to serve as a text-based replacement to any existing OS on a workstation -- it includes everything you need to work and play on-line. (in a text environment that is.)

  • Learn by doing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MadFarmAnimalz ( 460972 ) on Sunday March 17, 2002 @02:47PM (#3177305) Homepage
    I was a little disappointed by the article; I've tried Mandrake, RedHat, and Debian but my current system is one I built from ground up from source [linuxfromscratch.org]. There's a lot of lip-service paid to the merits of really learning linux and its internals, through things like the Power-up to Bash prompt HOWTO, but I don't see many people actually doing it.

    I've only been using linux since December, but I think building my own system has taught me a thing or three that someone who has used, for example Mandrake for a few years wouldn't know.

    There's much to be said for learning by doing. I was expecting a little more than a listing of ready-made distros.

    People have been predicting that it will take a dumbing down of some sort for linux to become a viable alternative on the desktop. Is this it?

  • Why not recovery CDROMs? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pclminion ( 145572 ) on Sunday March 17, 2002 @04:09PM (#3177563)
    I'd make a boot floppy. Gladly. If only I had a floppy drive.

    Why should I buy and install an archaic piece of hardware just for disaster recovery? The distributions should supply programs to help me make boot CDROMs.

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