ALso I noticed you lilo.conf doesn't point to the files in the correct place. It needs to be:
image=/mnt/usb/boot/bzImage
initrd=/mnt/usb/boot/initrd.img

and then you make sure that the kernel/initrd.img is in the /boot directory of you pen drive, and your pen drive is mounted to /mnt/usb.


well, that will need an entry in fstab on my /etc/fstab in the pen drive as well right?
or will just the /dev/sda1 / ext2 defaults 1,1 will help?
this is what my confusion is because if my pen drive boots and if I want it mounted on /mnt/usb every time I will need an entry in the fstab right?
correct me if I am wrong but I believe I will have to have /mnt/usb available on my pen drive and I can't use the noauto parameter?
and if my /dev/sda1 is getting mounted on / by default will it be adviced to mount the entire pen drive again on mnt/usb? I am confused because this is what your sample lilo/.conf says.
and by the way after I edit my lilo.conf and run lilo it gives problem on the lable. the lable is usblinux still some problem.
and lastly if all things go well I will restore my original lilo.conf file to my hard disk.
do I need to then run lilo again?
last time I did and the kernel pannicked.
thanks,
Krishnakant,

You keep getting your pen drive confused with the host system.

I wil try to explain it again. To your host system your pen drive will exist in /mnt/usb. If you boot to your host system, you need to point all operation on you pen drive to /mnt/usb. For instance, to install packages on your pen drive, you would install to /mnt/usb right? Well the same principal applies when you are installing lilo. Just like you would install a package to /mnt/usb, you will need to tell lilo to use the kernel in /mnt/usb/boot/. Remember that this line not telling lilo where the kernel will be when you boot to the pen drive. This is what the root=/dev/sda1 is for.

All these problems are coming from using lilo incorrectly. You do not need to reinstall lilo once you restore since it is allready installed on your hard disk. The only time you need to run 'lilo' is when you want to change the MBR.

note: Have you ever used grub? This might be why you are having a difficult time with lilo. lilo works diffrently then grub in the fact that the grub conf file controls the boot, where the lilo conf file controls how/where lilo is installed.

regards,
...drkstr

I hope I am not interfering by making a couple of observations.
First, respect to drkstr - I think you are possibly a saint.

But what concerns me is, what is the final application of this project?
If it is planned to run on more than one computer when it is done, then they will need to have an identical, or at worst a very similar hardware configuration to the machine the kernel was compiled on, or the stripped down kernel will have problems.
Also have the target computer(s) got the same boot-from-usb capability?

If it is planned to be a robust system, then usb sticks have, I think, some disadvantages.
They have a limited life compared to a hard drive. Over time I suspect that a hard disk would be more cost effective, even a removable (possibly usb) hard disk. Also, although the access times and storage capacity of usb sticks is increasing all the time, would they be up to the job?

If it is planned only for one target machine, then the cost of an internal hard drive is surely justified. Individual users could still use a usb stick for their /home directory

Have the processing requirements for real time voice synthesis been assessed?

Certainly I would wish to prove the concept on a more standard setup first, but maybe you already did that.

Dont get me wrong, it sounds like a project with very noble intentions.

best wishes,

tobyl

hi drkstr,
thanks a lot for your cooperation and help for fighting this out for me.
but alas now ext2 also shows the same problem.
some packages get installed but after that the system hangs.
same problem as with ext3.
now fat is the only option.
now please guide me.
I tried lilo but it gave a lot of warnings.
by the way when I did installpkg -root /mnt/usb *.tgz with usb pen drive formatted as fat, it gave a lot of permission denied for creating some simlinks.
then when I ran lilo it gave warnings that there might be problem with some bios and actually did install properly.
but the boot fails when I boot from usb through bios boot menu.
please give me your advice.
I am finally thinking of trying syslinux.
btw I also want a non root user on my usb linux system how I can handle this?
thanks.
Krishnakant.

Unfortunately, I don't think fat is a viable option. Fat has no file permissions which is not a good idea for any Linux system. You might be able to add a umask on the root drive when you mount the drive, but if this was the case, everything would have to be run as root.

I think the problem with the "hanging" might indicate a deeper problem (hardware maybe?) and I would suggest you try to solve this before anything else. While I have never actually used a pen drive before, from what I have read, people have been successful with both ext2 and ext3.

tobyl gave some good advice when he suggested that you might want to look tawrds other options. According to tobyl, pen drives can fail quite frequently and this could be the cause to your problem.

Perhaps you can try a different (newer) pen drive, then see if you can install the packages on it a few at a time. This way your not overloading it with a bunch of small files all at one time. When debugging a problem, you need to solve the lowest underlying problem then work your way up from there. Before you even start to worry about lilo, you need to make sure you can install the needed packages on the ext2, then be able to 'chroot /mnt/usb' with no problems.

regards,
...drkstr

hi drkstr,
I even tried with a new pen drive and did not go any further then getting 50 % of the packages installed.
actually I am installing the packages one by one. but every time one package or the other gives a problem and the system hangs.
it is bash some times and some times it is coreutils. when both amongst many others get installed then some other package down the line gives the problem but I could never install all the packages.
I even tried with an external USB hard disk.
but more or less the result is the same.
by the way security is not at all important in my system.
there will be no login prompt in the first place. it is going to be a hand held device that will just allow user to plug in another pen drive or USB hard disk with some files on it which can be spoken out. may be we will arange it to store files on the same pen drive as the os and not give any facility to the user for changing to another folder.
the system has only 4 arrow keys, an enter and escape key and an alt key.
that is how the device is.
so fat wont matter much if security is the only issue?
I tried with fat but there are some permission denied errors for creating simbolic links.
what is that problem.
it is also saying that it can't retain ownership on some files.
and also gave errors creating special file many times during the copy process.
will this be a problem?
how to avoid these problems with fat.
and I think syslinux was ment to run and boot a linux kernel on fat systems.
Please give me suggestions on how I will now manage it.
I want to ask one more question,
how will it be possible to have a single user directly log on without user prompt.
Please help
Krishnakant.

I don't use fat so you're on your own there. I would still see why you system is hanging however. This is probably an indication of a deeper underlying problem. But if fat works for you, I guess you have nothing to worry about.

Hope everything works out for you.

...drkstr

Krishnakant,

Don't despair.
I think you are being a bit ambitious with your project if you are new to linux, but if you are determined you will succeed.

Of course this my opinion, so ignore as you wish. I dont claim to have the same knowledge as dkstr.
I would suggest you try and get something simple working and then modify to your needs one step at a time. This way you wont get disheartened too soon.

I would dig out that external usb disk again.
I really think you need about 400-500 Mb to have a useful system, but this is only a guess.
Partition and format with ext2 (or ext3 as you prefer) and some swap.
Install slackware with minimal packages A & L as dkstr said.
Install lilo to the mbr of the same disk.
You can tell lilo to boot straight away, rather than offer a menu with a delay as we normally use for dual boot.
So long as you leave the lilo on your host machine alone, you should get 2 different lilo, depending on which disk you set your boot default to.
Change your boot order to boot from the usb disk, and check it is working ok.
Recompile your kernel to your requirements, use your old .config file as a start to save time, you can remove the original kernel and /lib/modules once you know it boots ok.
Load your ncurses programs etc and test. At this stage I would want to make sure that the concept of your project is viable, so you want to get that text-to-speech stuff working (I know nothing about this, other than I have heard of festival)
You can log in without username and password by modifying agetty in /etc/inittab, I found some ideas here:

http://alug.appstate.edu/index.php?m...=SlackwareTips

Of course you will not want to follow everything here, but you can use it as a guide. It shouldn't be too hard to get a script running at this point to start your ncurses menu.

If all this works, then you could go back to your usb stick idea, you will have a much better idea what is possible by then.

Also you can check out partimage. so you can save a working setup, tweak the system, and restore the original if you messed up.

I may have made a mistake in all this, so dont expect too much, but it may be something to think about.

regards,

tobyl

hello tobyl,
actually what you suggested was right and although you said you don't know much you are very modest.
well as per the instructions of drkstr I indeed installed a minimal system and it worked fine.
even my own compiled 2.6.16.18 kernel worked fine.
however the problem is with copying that entire tree on to a pen drive.
one thing I noticed in your suggestion was about the swap. I never created a swap space on my pen drive.
and by the way only problem comes when I am trying to install packages on to the pen drive.
I just can't understand if slax can work on a pen drive with fat system why can't my system work?
the reason I am not using slax is that I need to have a totally different system and the .mo concept of modules did not impress me.
I just could not handle it well may be that is my lack of knowledge.
I am quite used to linux with its standard way of working. but this is my first time around modifying it.
if drkstr is reading this post, actually your help has been invaluable. most of the things are working perfectly as you say but that pen drive.
any ways if I can only understand how slax is managing linux on a fat file system, I would rather pick up that idea.
thanking you,
Krishnakant.

If your system hangs when you try to run setup on a USB stick, I'd suspect that the caching is causing it to hang. Before the system can finish clearing the cache more packages are being installed and things get crossed up.

SLAX use a loopback mounted rootfs which is contained in a file on any of several file systems.
I think you need to take a few months and disassemble a few distros that do something like what you want, so you can see how things are done.

I suspected this might be the case. I would also suspect this is why Slax uses the "module system" A lot of small files = pen drive overload.

Krishnakant, the .mo system is actually pretty neat when you break it down. Here is a little experiment for you. Download the most bare bone version of Slax and see if you can get it to boot on the USB pen, no modifications or anything, just see if it can boot. Ok, is it working now? If so, start unpacking the modules with 'mo2dir module.mo /tmp/modulename' (you can do this from Slax if you are still unsure how to get it working in your host system, or you can ask for help). Take a bit to poke around and see what each module contains. Any of this look familure? If you want to modify the kernel, download the Slax kernel source from their website, and add in your changes. You can turn a directory tree back into a module with 'dir2mo /directory modulename.mo'. The next logical step from here would be to make your own core.mo and kernel.mo, and of course, see if it boots.

Remember to start simple, then build on from there.

regards,
...drkstr

hi drkstr,
yes that's a nice experiment.
actually I have the frodo version of slax. unfortunately the documentation is not so easy to understand but thanks to you I at least have the basic concept right.
now my question is that can I use my own kernel which I compiled as per my needs?
secondly I did not fime mo2dir and dir2mo commands on my slackware system.
do I need to install some thing specially for that?
and yes I saw that when slax boots it creates fstab on the fly at run time.
I did not understand why?
again I am using frodo which is a smaller version of slax.
and Please provide me the link for the 2.6 slax kernel source because I did not find a tar.gz or tar.bz2 file for that on their web site.
may be I overlooked some thing and im sorry if I did.
and will the normal way of compiling and building kernel work?
thanks,
Krishnakant.

heh, yeah it can be a bit tricky, I agree with you on the poor documentation. You will mostly just have to figure it out by playing around with it and trying to break it down to see how it works.

Look through the modules in the base directory. The kernel.mo contains all the needed modules for the kernel, whicle the kernel imiage actually resides in the /boot directory of the CD. You can make your own custom kernel by downloading the Slax kernel source from the modules->development section on their website. It will be in .mo form so you need to extract it using their provided tools. Once you have it in directory form, and your customness to it and compile like normal. Look through the kernel.mo and the /boot on the CD and see if you can tell where everything goes. If not, feel free to ask for more help.

These are tools provided by Slax. See if you can poke around a bit and find an "install" script. If you can't get it to work, you can run the tools from Slax itself. (hint: you will need to use the Slax kernel on your host system for the tools to work)

That's the idea behind a "live" system. The file system should be read only, and everything that needs to be written to is created on the fly in memory (ramdisk). This is good anyways since less writing will extend the life of the USB stick.

good luck!
...drkstr

hi drkstr.
I think I could figure out the modules a bit.

I want to know if live scripts can help?
I want to have dir2mo and mo2dir commands on my slackware system.
if I use life scripts will it give me these commands.
I am asking in advance so that I don't waist time on some thing that is not going to work.

now I want to know if I need to do any modification to slax itself.
I mean if files like fstab get created at run time, how will I manage the passwd and /etc/profile so that I can set things up for my device such as auto login and auto running my default menu driven program instead of bash?
thanks,
Krishnakant.

hmm, actually now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure the installer script I was refering to was part of the live-scripts. SO to answer yoru question, yes they will help. Sorry for the misinformation.

modify away! When I was playing around with Slax, I changed everything around. You can hack up the auto login by editing the /etc/inittab in the core.mo for instance.

...drkstr