Hello

I am trying to create a live CD from my RHEL5.3 installed machine. This is for some internal testing purpose !! The following is what I am doing

1. I took syslinux and replaced initrd and vmlinuz in isolinux directory with the one in the server.
2. I created a file of ext3 file system and copied every thing under / in the server ( except dev, proc, sys, tmp )
3. Copied the file to CD
4. I need to modify initrd init script to mount the file ( file system ) to some directory and create required devices, mount proc and switch root.
5. Switch root to the newly mounted directory.

Here I am not sure how to get the handle to cdrom in initrd. Could some one help me give me some tips on how to do this in init script please.

If you have a better way to make a liveCD from an already existing system, please let me know. I don't want to dump every thing in initrd :-(.

Thanks
Salil

I probably don't understand the question, because the answer seems too easy! On my machine the cdrom devices are simply /dev/hdc and /dev/hdd, as they're both IDE devices. To mount either one in the init script in the initrd, you would need the filesystem modules and then simply issue e.g.: mount /dev/hdc /MountPointInInitrd. I presume the modules needed would depend on the cdrom; iso9660, joliet, RockRidge. I *think* those are all included in the fat support and if I recall you need the nls and codepage modules also...

Hello Harmless

Thanks for the reply. I think I will have to scan the devices like hdc or hdd ( or is it going to srX in case of scsi devices ?? )

One more thing I am getting stuck is - I am not able to change the init script in the initrd. In RHEL based initrd nash is being used as the shell - which has very limited features !! So I thought of adding sh or bash ( statically linked ) in the /bin directory of initrd and change init script to run sh. But that doesn't work some how. I don't know if the kernel has any hard binding to nash or not !!!.

Thanks
salil

Rather than trying sh or bash, you'd be better off copying over busybox into the initrd-tree/bin; that will enable you to use mount, ls and everything else you need.

Yeah busybox can be added .. but the point is - I am not able to execute a command in nash environment.

Salil