Bootable Recovery CD-Rom

[Brian]

Does anyone have any information on how to create a Openserver 5.0.5
bootable CD, that would have both the boot/root floppy images on it. I
am able to create a bootable CD with the boot floppy (both unix.Z and
ramdisk.Z are on CD), but when the system asks for the root disk, I do
not know the proper syntax to tell it how to access the root image
that is on the CD. There has to be another way. Can anyone help?

[Jean-Pierre Radley]

Brian typed (on Thu, Jan 02, 2003 at 02:53:35PM -0800):

Order and use BackupEDGE.

--
JP

[Steve Fabac]

Brian,

I have a UNIX "utility" CD that I maintain with tools (ssh, visionfs,
sendmail, etc.) and software I have developed and collected over the
years as a directory under /u/cd on my system. As I update my tools,
I burn a new CD for my briefcase. The boot image on the CD consists
of my standard configuration for client systems with additional
drivers for Mylex and DPT RAID controllers. I can boot all the client
systems that I have set up over the years and some systems that
I am working on for the first time.

I modified the "fd" script for mkdev to allow it to operate on a ram
disk. Normally, the script will check for valid /dev/ devices
against an internal look up table.

Install the modified "fd" in /usr/lib/mkdev (move the existing fd
link out of the way first).

Edit /etc/rc2.d/8/userdef to setup the ram disk as ram01 then
reboot the system. Note that my userdef sets up a 16M RAM disk
and I just used that for creating the boot image even though 16M is
larger than needed for the 2.88M image.

Run mkdev fd and choose 2.88M root/boot single floppy. (specify
drive 0 and "no" to format first).

Size the ram disk image to 2.88M by executing:
dd if=/dev/ram01 of=/cd_root/cdboot.img bs=36b count=160

Run: mkisofs -V "Emergency Root/Boot disk" -b cdboot.img -R -J
/u/cd_root > /u/root.isofs

Then run:

cdrecord -v -v fs=6m speed=12 dev=5,0 /u/root.isofs

Note that dev=5,0 specifies SCSI CD writer on ID5 on default
SCSI controller 0.

The following are my modifications to the fd script shown in
context:

> sselect() {
> case $1 in
> 48) tpi=48 size=720 spt=9 minor=4
> desc="48ds9" ;;
> 96) tpi=96 size=2400 spt=15 minor=52
> desc="96ds15" ;;
> 135ds9) tpi=135 size=1440 spt=9 minor=36
> desc="135ds9" ;;
> 135ds18) tpi=135 size=2880 spt=18 minor=60
> desc="135ds18" ;;
> 135ds36) tpi=135 size=5760 spt=36 minor=44
> desc="135ds36" ;;
> ram01) tpi=135 size=5760 spt=36 minor=44
> desc="135ds36" ;;
> esac
> }

and

> INODES=1024
> case $dev in
> *ds15*) BLKS=5120;;
> *ram01*|*ds18*|*ds36*) BLKS=6144;;
> esac

and
> #Hard code for ram disk, swap comments when building floppy.
> dev=/dev/ram01
> rdev=/dev/ram01
> # dev=/dev/fd${drive}${tpi}ds${spt}
> # rdev=/dev/rfd${drive}${tpi}ds${spt}

--

Steve Fabac
S.M. Fabac & Associates
816/765-1670