Basic (Minimal) System
 

Hi, can anyone help me or tell me how I would go about building a Linux basic minimal system? I need it so that it can boot from flash memory, but also hasa RAM drive, and the OpenH323 gatekeeper installed. It will need to be tiny, like a few megabytes (upto 32mb).

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated,

thanks,

Adrian.

there is no simple (i know of) way to do that:
first you have to construct a minimal root-filesystem (/etc,/usr/bin,/sbin...). put everthing you need there and test it by using chroot. build your kernel with just the necessary things.
best is to use cramfs (really low space) if everthing works ok and but it to the storage (eeprom/floppy..) and extract that at boot to a ramdrive.
i did that a year ago and it took me a week to get it up and running.
but there may be easier ways ;-)
very useful:
http://www.tldp.org /HOWTO's /Linux from scratch

Have a look at Feather Linux. They have a USB version.

http://featherlinux.berlios.de/download.htm

The only thing is it is 62mb.

Dave

how about
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Hi again, Iam running a VIA EPIA V5000E board with 256mb RAM, a floppy drive, and a 128mb compact flash card plugged into an IDE to compact flash reader/writer. I also need to use the VIA ethernet port (I have drivers)

Just a few things really, I need to build a kernel do that it has the drivers in, (will the compact flash stuff need drivers, or will it show as hard drive?) and I need to install a few things like OpenGNUH323, OpenH323 and PWLib, as well as have SSH access.

This little system needs to be like 32mb max :cry:

Do you think this is possible?

Cheers,

Adrian.

^

Yeh sure, LFS , those crazy people stripped an installation with apache down to less than 8mb. Beware you need to be on the ball in terms of linux, although there is a full walk through, and we are talking LONG install times here :).

I think the stuff you're talking about is pretty small, sshd etc, not too big :)

Good luck

Steve