I'm trying to set up a "diskless" pc which should run Mandrake Linux 8.1 from a Compact Flash card of only 128 Mb. It comes with a manual which states what configuration files to modify etc, but it's rather incomplete in some areas. The Compact Flash card is made read only, and the manual states symbolic links are required to enable writing to the root file system. This is what the manual describes about these links:

Create symbolic links into ramdisk
A series of symbolic links are required to enable writing to the root file system. These are described in the table below:

Symbolic link location --- Filesystem location
/ --- /ramdisk
/tmp --- /ramdisk/tmp
/etc/exports --- /ramdisk/etc/exports
/etc/mtab --- /ramdisk/etc/mtab
etcetc..

Obviously I can't do "ln -s /ramdisk /", does anyone have an idea how these links are supposed to be created? Will I need to create symbolic links to each separate file in these directories?

Obviously you ordinarilly couldn't do the ln that way but since presumably the root you are on is the one from the ramdisk perhaps they have something embedded that allows for this? Did you try it?

Also ln does have a force option (-f). Maybe trying that?

It seems a bit of a catch 22 however - if you can't write to / without the link then I don't see how you could create the link as it requires a write. It is this that makes me think they somehow allow for it in what you booted.

It may be morons wrote the documentation. Maybe they meant you needed to chroot it to make it writable:

chroot /ramdisk

Would make /ramdisk the root (/) and all its subdirectories would then be relative to that new root.