installing tc / mc into ramdisk

[ezee]

I'm wondering if I can install tiny/micro core into a ramdrive ?

like:
edit grub menu.lst to increase the ramdisk size to <whatever you would make your partition normally>
make fs on ramdisk
follow regular tc instructions but to ramdisk instaed of regular partition
chroot into ramdisk?  (dunno)

I'd like to do this...can anybody offer advice?

[gerald_clark]

TC and MC already load into RAM disk.

[ezee]

if you use the live CD, yes.  But if you install it to your local hard drive, and then tce-load a bunch of packages, that stuff isn't in RAM...its on your hard disk, right?

Im talking about the WHOLE thing running in a ram disk.

[althalus]

create a file called copy2fs.flg in your tce directory. Loaded extensions will then be copied to RAM.

Or use tce2fs.lst to selectively choose which extensions to load to ram. See "Install Options" in Apps Audit if you'd prefer to use a gui than editting the files by hand.

[ezee]

i don't think im explaining my question clearly.  I'm hoping to just install tc directly into a ramdisk, just like installing it to local hard drive.

I think the process will require a chroot of some kind, unless the grub/kernel/initrd portion of boot can be modified to create a ramdisk, push bzImage to it, and then boot natively to that?

[curaga]

I'm not sure I understand you. Doing an install to a ramdisk would be lost on a reboot?

The base is always in ram, and the extensions can be loaded to ram either selectively (copy2fs.lst) or all (copy2fs.flg).

[ezee]

my ultimate goal is to install vmware ESX into ramdisk, but I want to practice the process with tc since A) I know how to install it and B) it installs quickly so I can recover from mistakes quickly as I'm figuring it out.

Here is the gist of what I'm trying to do:
ESX/ESXi has a .dd image on the install CD that's used for installing into USB thumb drive.
I want to remaster the tc live cd with the .dd image, boot to it, create a large (64M) ramdisk, .dd the image into the ramdisk, and then figure out how to chroot into that ramdisk to run ESX in ramdisk.  The .dd image does not require a reboot after the install...that's what's cool about it.

So, I'm wondering if the similar can be done with TC so I can figure out the process before I try it with ESX.

[curaga]

If the image is not a straight linux root fs, it can't be chrooted to. If it's not, you'd need to find the necessary file inside the image, and use that.

To just practise TC chroot into a tmpfs, do something like:

sudo mkdir /mnt/tmp
sudo mount none /mnt/tmp -t tmpfs
cd /mnt/tmp
zcat /path/to/tinycore.gz | sudo cpio -i
sudo chroot .

[ezee]

can you give a brief description of this line:


zcat /path/to/tinycore.gz | sudo cpio -i

[newbean]

To: athalus

In
Re: installing tc / mc into ramdisk
« Reply #3 on: July 01, 2010, 07:22:17 PM »   

You wrote:

"create a file called copy2fs.flg in your tce directory. Loaded extensions will then be copied to RAM."

"Or use tce2fs.lst to selectively choose which extensions to load to ram. See "Install Options" in Apps Audit if you'd prefer to use a gui than editting the files by hand."


I'm using Tiny Core 3.0Alpha8. 
Is  "/tmp/tce/onboot.lst"  the same as "tce2fs.lst"?

Where can I find "Install options"?
Where is "Apps Audit"?

It does'nt show-up in the AppBrowser window and it does'nt
appear in the AppBrowser file list.

Could you clarify?

Thanks
newbean

[curaga]

can you give a brief description of this line:


zcat /path/to/tinycore.gz | sudo cpio -i

It extracts the tinycore image, as root to preserve permissions. In two steps, because cpio doesn't handle compression like tar does.

Is  "/tmp/tce/onboot.lst"  the same as "tce2fs.lst"?

Same format, but not the same file. Also, I believe it was a typo, he meant copy2fs.lst.