A very, very,small slackware router
in [Slackware]
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From: Shadow on 1 Feb 2008 15:15 I managed to get a router working at home on an old asus tx97 with 64 Mb ram, no monitor or keyboard. I just boot it and it links me up with my wireless, and routes and firewalls for me. Using a SLAX Frodo Edition v 5.1.8, and a few scripts added as modules. The trouble is it uses 60 Mb ram (only 4 free) and takes maybe 3 minutes to boot. It freezes after a time, probably out of space for log files. I deleted a lot of stuff, and got it down to 54 Mb in ram, does not freeze anymore, but even so, ages to boot. So I'm wondering, would it be possible to install a minimum slackware to a disk, compile and add my ethernet and wireless drivers as modules, (using checkinstall), and then burn the whole to a live cd ? Something like coyote, or brazilfw, which have tons of features and fit in only a fraction of the ram ? (but do NOT support wireless, the drivers are all outdated and broken, and the development packages are absolute tripe, impossible to use ) Any ideas ?
From: Henrik Carlqvist on 1 Feb 2008 15:45 Shadow <sh(a)dow> wrote: > So I'm wondering, would it be possible to install a minimum slackware > to a disk, compile and add my ethernet and wireless drivers as > modules, (using checkinstall), and then burn the whole to a live cd ? What you really is asking is this: "Would it be possible to create my own custom live CD distribution starting with Slackware?" The answer is yes. With a little work you can create your own Linux distribution and Slackware is a good start for creating new distributions. > Something like coyote, or brazilfw, If it is worth the time to create your own distribution or if you would be better off spending that time searching other distributions like freesco, floppyfw or something else is up to you. Creating your own live CD is a good learning experience and would be fun. If you want to save yourself some time and use another distribution http://distrowatch.com/ is a good place to start. regards Henrik -- The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is: hc3(at)poolhem.se Examples of addresses which go to spammers: root(a)localhost postmaster(a)localhost
From: +Alan Hicks+ on 1 Feb 2008 15:56 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 2008-01-31, Shadow <sh(a)dow> wrote: > So I'm wondering, would it be possible to install a minimum slackware > to a disk, compile and add my ethernet and wireless drivers as > modules, (using checkinstall), and then burn the whole to a live cd ? Yes, but I don't see what you would gain from that. Simply install Slackware to the hard drive and be done with it. You can setup a swap partition as well to give yourself more virtual RAM. I might recommend Slackware 11.0 for this over 12.0, just because of the RAM constraints. The 2.4 kernel will save you an appreciable amount here. - -- It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, Than for a man to hear the song of fools. Ecclesiastes 7:5 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHojYdrZS6hX/gvjoRAlaMAJ49U4g2UWMmhsPIKpJ8GolHMzkbeACggzOW mPk6+S+JynvGsTNNEs7CAaI= =68mR -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
From: Tom Newton on 1 Feb 2008 16:04 On 2008-01-31, Shadow <sh(a)dow> wrote: > I managed to get a router working at home on an old asus tx97 with 64 > Mb ram, no monitor or keyboard. I just boot it and it links me up with > my wireless, and routes and firewalls for me. Using a SLAX Frodo > Edition v 5.1.8, and a few scripts added as modules. > > The trouble is it uses 60 Mb ram (only 4 free) and takes maybe 3 > minutes to boot. It freezes after a time, probably out of space for > log files. > > I deleted a lot of stuff, and got it down to 54 Mb in ram, does not > freeze anymore, but even so, ages to boot. > > So I'm wondering, would it be possible to install a minimum slackware > to a disk, compile and add my ethernet and wireless drivers as > modules, (using checkinstall), and then burn the whole to a live cd ? > > Something like coyote, or brazilfw, which have tons of features and > fit in only a fraction of the ram ? (but do NOT support wireless, the > drivers are all outdated and broken, and the development packages are > absolute tripe, impossible to use ) > > Any ideas ? I'm running 12.0 here, with X up, a window manager with 9 full screen windows. Firefox, slrn and mutt and two invocations of vi, one of less, as well as scripts running repetitions in several of those windows, and dhcpcd and a packet logger on eth0. I'm using 47M of RAM. Something is REALLY wrong with your setup. I don't know what, though. I'd suggest posting the output of ps aux and taking a look at what's going on with lsof. Tom
From: Shadow on 1 Feb 2008 16:18
On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:45:02 +0100, Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist(a)deadspam.com> wrote: >Shadow <sh(a)dow> wrote: >> So I'm wondering, would it be possible to install a minimum slackware >> to a disk, compile and add my ethernet and wireless drivers as >> modules, (using checkinstall), and then burn the whole to a live cd ? > >What you really is asking is this: > >"Would it be possible to create my own custom live CD distribution >starting with Slackware?" > >The answer is yes. With a little work you can create your own Linux >distribution and Slackware is a good start for creating new distributions. > >> Something like coyote, or brazilfw, > >If it is worth the time to create your own distribution or if you would be >better off spending that time searching other distributions like freesco, >floppyfw Neither freesco or floppyfw or coyote or brazilfw support my wireless drivers (I need the latest ralink rt61 drivers, the old ones are no-go.). Any of these would be fantastic if I could compile my own drivers, but then I would need to have access to the kernel sources and .config file. Like I said, brazilfw offers the kernel source for download, but there are no docs and I tried for a week to compile the drivers, and when I managed they would not load at all, version conflicts. (the sources are obviously broken) > or something else is up to you. Creating your own live CD is a >good learning experience and would be fun. If you want to save yourself >some time and use another distribution http://distrowatch.com/ is a good >place to start. I've gone the linuxfromscratch way, but it would take me ages to build a working system. I would rather a "bare" system I could just add stuff to. Maybe 4-6 hours work involved. If floppyfw has kernel source, it would just be a matter of compiling the modules. It has wireless tools, no sources that I could find though. BTW, I find it amazing that ralink, one of the most linux-friendly wireless-chip manufacturers are totally ignored by most distribs. Up-to date drivers with the wlan0 interface and monitor mode have been available for ages, but everyone insists on using the old, and broken ra0 sources .... > >regards Henrik ty |