2.3. Construction

2.3.1. Prepare the boot disk floppy

Insert a blank diskette labeled "boot disk".

It may be necessary to erase the "blank" diskette if it comes factory pre-formatted for another, non-Linux operating system. This can be done using the command dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/fd0 bs=1k count=1440

bash# mke2fs -m0 /dev/fd0 bash# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt

2.3.2. Build the kernel

The steps for building the kernel were tested using Linux kernel version 2.4.18 and should work any 2.4.x kernel. The latest version of the kernel source code may be downloaded from http://www.kernel.org or one of its mirrors.

bash# cd /usr/src/linux bash# make menuconfig

Be sure to configure support for the following:

• 386 processor

• Floppy disk

• RAM disk

• Second extended (ext2) filesystem

• Console on virtual terminal

bash# make dep bash# make clean bash# make bzImage

2.3.3. Copy the kernel to diskette

bash# mkdir /mnt/boot bash# cp /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage /mnt/boot/vmlinuz

2.3.4. Copy the LILO boot loader

bash# cp /boot/boot.b /mnt/boot/boot.b

2.3.5. Create device files that LILO needs

bash# mkdir /mnt/dev bash# cd /mnt/dev bash# mknod fd0 b 2 0 bash# mknod console c 5 1

2.3.6. Write a simple lilo.conf

bash# mkdir /mnt/etc bash# cd /mnt/etc

Use an editor like vi, emacs or pico to create the following lilo.conf file:

# /etc/lilo.conf - boot loader configuration file # boot=/dev/fd0 compact prompt read-only vga=normal image=/boot/vmlinuz label=bootdisk append="load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=1" root=/dev/fd0 # # end of /etc/lilo.conf

2.3.7. Install the LILO boot loader

bash# lilo -r /mnt

2.3.8. Unmount the boot disk

bash# cd / bash# umount /mnt

2.3.9. Prepare the root disk floppy

Insert a blank diskette labeled "root disk".

bash# mke2fs -m0 /dev/fd0 bash# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt

2.3.10. Build BASH

Get the bash-2.05 source code package from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/ and untar it into the /usr/src directory.

BASH version 2.05b, the latest version at the time of this writing, will not build successfully when using the --enable-minimal-config option. This leaves two choices. We can either fix 2.05b by applying the patch posted on news://gnu.bash.bug under the subject, "Compile error in execute_cmd.c with --enable-minimal-config" or we can simply use the 2.05a version.

Build BASH for an i386 CPU with the following commands:

bash# cd /usr/src/bash-2.05a bash# export CC="gcc -mcpu=i386" bash# ./configure --enable-static-link \ --enable-minimal-config --host=i386-pc-linux-gnu bash# make bash# strip bash

2.3.11. Copy BASH to the root disk

bash# mkdir /mnt/bin bash# cp bash /mnt/bin/bash bash# ln -s bash /mnt/bin/sh

2.3.12. Create device files that BASH needs

bash# mkdir /mnt/dev bash# mknod /mnt/dev/console c 5 1

2.3.13. Unmount the root disk

bash# cd / bash# umount /mnt