How to create custom minix ISO

[Sandeep Linux Verma]

Hi all there,
I was trying to make minix ISO from the source code. beacuse i lost my
cd of minix. and i have a poor internet I can't download it from the
net. so i tried to make it using source.
i followed these steps:

1. I already have packages and package sources in /usr/bigports/
Packages and /usr/bigports/Sources respectively.
2. I ran "release.sh -c".
3. It created the boot image minix3_1_2_ide_build1.iso in the /usr/src/
tools/ directory.
4. i tried to boot this minix iso on qemu using command:
qemu -cdrom minix.iso -boot d
5. Initially it started well but after some steps it showed
bad superblock
No CD found.

Please help me if aanybody can..

[parijat chauhan]

hey sandeep.....
me also tried same thing...while the iso build is successful
yes me also got errors while building iso,but script continues
but what i cant understand is if those errors are fatel to make ISO
unusable
why the script continues to build ISO.When tried to boot
with qemu,kernel loads but then switchRoot fails.i think this is what
when minix kernel tries to switch root to live filesystem on CD...

**********************************************
i also suspect about policies of minix development.
like why its developer or supporter (including at VU) have not
answered such common questions on Minix wiki.you and me got same
messages with script ,it means lot of people have suffered from same
problem.
but no help available.perheps people at VU dont want that anyone
except them understand minix
also i googled nd found there was a MFS(minix from scratch)
project.why that project was removed.

[Tinghui Wang]

It is said that Minix is designed for teaching.
Is this still true now?
I also wonder about the aim of all these projects on minix3.org
and what is the destiny "Minix" wants to reach?

Regards,
Steven, Wang

2009/4/6 parijat chauhan <santir...@gmail.com>

[Sandeep Linux Verma]

hi there ..
my new experiments with release.sh yield some worthless solutions...
wanna see what minix have... look here...
i tried with changing temporary disk values but infact got errors on I/
O with temp disks... what to do...
i changed the root mount point for live image to /dev/c0d0p2, my build
made it to /dev/c0d2p2 by default...
my tunings with relese.sh seam to have no change on the build process.

Couldn't anyone solve there my problem...
My question is probably to Ben, have you did it earlier???
if you did then please let us know how you did???
a tutorial from first to last step will suffice...

guys dont you hink its a real big problem...

Minix have got much capabilities, you guys shouldn't doubt on its
policies...
Long live Minix!!!

[parijat chauhan]

ya sandeep, you r at good point.
wht actually happens when build ISO tht TMPDISK3 variable is going to be ROOTFS
of resultant ISO. if you assigned value /dev/c0d2p0s0 to
TMPDISK3.this will become ROOTFS
for iso.but kernel on CD tries to mount ROOTFS from c0d0 disk.which is
here c0d2.

i think this is only problem left with revision.sh. and i m unable to
find a workaround for this until now......

[Ben Gras]

> Couldn't anyone solve there my problem...
> My question is probably to Ben, have you did it earlier???
> if you did then please let us know how you did???
> a tutorial from first to last step will suffice...
>
> guys dont you hink its a real big problem...

Well, to be honest, there hasn't been a great deal of demand for
building custom ISO's from what I've seen. Over the last few years. At
all. In practice, near as I can tell, I've been close to the only
'user' of this script, so although I'm happy to help you get it
working, no, I don't think it's a real big problem :).

To answer your question: the steps you printed are right. (Nowadays it
uses RAM disks for the temporary filesystems, making it much less of a
bother to do this - no messy temporary filesystems etc. Try the latest
snapshot - if you have enough physical RAM that is.)

I don't really know what went wrong with your build process. The
script *largely* aborts on errors (with the exception of the
'chrootmake' step, the return code isn't passed properly to release.sh
due to the chroot command), but I assume something went wrong
somewhere and the script went and made a useless ISO anyway. So my
only suggestion with this information is to look for errors.

There is a phase where you're supposed to see two 'filesystem full'
errors - it actually copies /dev/zero to a file on the filesystem, and
then removes it, to zero out unused data (and make the resulting ISO
easier to compress), so you can safely ignore those errors.

Good luck!