Loopback Slackware Linux

[Douglas Mayne]

I have been working to get a basic version of Slackware to run
from a single loopback file. I looked at Tom's root/boot and zipslack for
examples. I have my "distribution" working (slackware-current based)
and have tested that it is working as a loopback file on ext2 and NTFS
partitions. To add NTFS, I applied the kernel patch as detailed here:
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/downloads.html

The packages installed do not include X, so there is no GUI. But all of
the command line tools for networking (ssh, ftp, ...) work nicely upon
bootup! Also, it needs read/write access to the loopback, so that rules
out running this directly from a cdrom.

Here is the list of packages which are installed:
http://www.xmission.com/~ddmayne/bareback_linux/packages

Here are some statistics showing it running on an SMP box:
http://www.xmission.com/~ddmayne/bareback_linux/ver
http://www.xmission.com/~ddmayne/bareback_linux/df
http://www.xmission.com/~ddmayne/bareback_linux/top

Here is the linuxrc file, which is critical for loopback filesystems:
http://www.xmission.com/~ddmayne/bareback_linux/linuxrc

Here is the list of files used on the initrd:
http://www.xmission.com/~ddmayne/bareback_linux/initrd.lst.gz

I still have more work to do on this project, but it is already working
nicely. Respond to this thread if you would like me to post a gzip of the
distribution (approx 400M) to alt.binaries.cd.image.linux, or another
newsgroup.

It seems this project is easier than it used to be. Soon everyone will
have their own loopback system. But if you're having trouble getting
started, then perhaps these details will help out.

--
Douglas Mayne

[Fred Emmott]

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Ever heard of topologi linux? think its 9.0 based but does exactly the
same thing

- --
Fred Emmott

Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely
unintentional side effect. --- Linus Torvalds
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