BDI install disk for EMC

George Fause wrote:

>Finally, I guess what I'm envisioning here would be a software
>distribution that would be ready to 'burn' onto CD-ROM, so that
>non-geeks wouldn't have to get into the guts of the software. >By
>including a (simple but functional) JAVA client, someone could >use the
>system with no additional programming.

George


I met you at Cabin Fever (I Think.. I met so many people).

Today we need the following for EMC to get past the "linux Geek"
status that it has now achieved.

I think one idea that I have had that relates to EHP but I would
call BDI (Brain DEAD INSTALL)IT IS a hacked and patcthed RH5.2
CD with the kernel already patched with rtlinux and EMC precompiled on the CD,
Just install it and run.

This would involve
extracting the existing REDHAT install CD to a "virtual" file
system on a hard drive and replacing files in the distibution.
Then we burn a "new" redhat5.1rt install cd. If we want to
get fancy, we could even put a version of EMC on it if we were willing to delete
some stuff to make some space (the foreign language DOCS for instance could
go)

I see several items that I am not sure how to do.

Copy the CD image to a virtual file system on a hard disk. I saw a how-to on
this but then I lost it. Perhaps it was in the
CDR howto.

1) add the rtlinux source code and help files to the linux source code directory.


2) make sure the rtlinux .h files end up in the right place on
the cd so they install later.

3) recompile the kernel so that the rtlinux patch is in it.

4) set lilo to boot either a 16MB,32MBor 64MB system. These are
the most common. i.e lilo: would show

linux_2.0.36-7
rtlinux_16mb
rt_linux_32mb
rt_linux_64mb

Then you select the kernel to boot based upon the memory you
have installed. The 1MB shared memory is already accounted for
in the default lilo script that we put on the cd. it then has 3 RT kernels
and one non-rt kernel ready to boot. ( actually only
two differnet kernels, just several parameters set for memory size in the lilo.conf
file)

5) make sure the instal script will copy all this extra stuff
when the install runs from the CD.

6) PRE Compile EMC and have the object files copied to /usr/local/EMC when the
linux install script is finished.


Remember we are not changing the files on and installed machine
but modifying the install cd so that the result after the install is what we
want.

I know you have lots of linux experience. Is it possible
to Hack the install disk in this way??

This would be a large step forward and a great help to EMC.

P/s we might need to do it again on RH6.1 when EMC is ready for
the 2.2 kernel. I have both install media avaliable.

dave