Various quations including booting, xwindows and device management
 

Hi.

I'm currently in the process of creating a small custom distro. But, because i can't get initrd to work properly, i thought i would go about it a different way.

Initrd basically loads an initial linux os which loads the neceasary things for the proper OS. So basically, i plan on the initial os to be dos!

The main reasons are because i can't get initrd working properly, so instead of being easy and fixing it, i though i would go and do things my own way, however, this thread hasnt been made for you all to flame me or teach me how to use initrd, i have my mind set on my own boot method now.

So i have a minimal windows boot disk that loads dos with CD support, im including gzip, loadlin and xmsdsk (to create a ramdisk) on this floppy image. this image can then be used for an el-torito boot off a CD.

So far i have a very basic OS, that just an ash prompt from busybox, i mean very basic. i don't have the boot routine done yet, but i can chroot and "work" in the environment. i still have the tedious task of creating all the links to busybox for each individual applet in there. does anyone know a quick/easier way?

So i have a few questions.

1. when i create a ramdrive with XMSdsk, what label will it have in linux? (eg /dev/ram0)

2. Im quiet certain it wont, but will this boot method have much of an effect on the final OS' performance. loadlin says that it will ovewrite the DOS footprints it has been loaded from, so in theory it should have no effect right?

3. this is a bit more of a DOS question, but could someone please outline the process of detecting the letter of the cdrom drive in dos, so then i can use gzip to extract a gz file off there and into the ram drive, then loadlin can launch the OS from there

Now some questions on xwindows, ive done a lot of reading, but im still now 100% familiar with xwindows.

4. how would i go about launching k-drive xserver? like a minimal install and then launch. if you don't know how to do this, then could someone please send me to a link that will explain how to create/install/run a minimal xserver.

5. how does the window manager and xserver know about eachother? like how does the xserver know which WM to launch and where it can be found etc, and how does the wm know where the xserver is?

Thanks guys.

Dom

Don't think I can answer any of your questions but if it is booting you after then burning a bootable Grub floppy in emulation mode into a CD is all that take to boot up any PC system.