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drivers are all outdated and broken, and the development packages are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 ?

Shadow <sh@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@localhost postmaster@localhost

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On 2008-01-31, Shadow <sh@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
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On 2008-01-31, Shadow <sh@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

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:45:02 +0100, Henrik Carlqvist
<Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com> wrote:

>Shadow <sh@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

On 2008-01-31, +Alan Hicks+ <alan@lizella.netWORK> wrote:
>
> On 2008-01-31, Shadow <sh@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.

To piggyback here a little, you can mount many of the filesystems
read-only. This won't defeat a real cracker, but might trip up a script
kiddie, if you're hoping to run a live CD to prevent mangling your
filesystems (permanently anyway).

--keith


--
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information

Henrik Carlqvist wrote:

> 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.

Frozentech is probably easier if all you're looking for is Live CD
Distributions. http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php
--
Two Ravens
"...hit the squirrel..."

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:56:46 GMT, +Alan Hicks+ <alan@lizella.netWORK>
wrote:

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>Hash: SHA1
>
>On 2008-01-31, Shadow <sh@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.
1) I don't have a spare HD
2) If I'm hacked its just a matter of pressing the reset
button. That is what I love about liveCds, I can undo hours and hours
of crackers efforts with a push of a button
>
>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.
If I had a HD I'd just make a 128MB swap on it. And the 2.6
kernel is much more stable/updated when it comes to wireless.
I had no luck compiling the ralink sources against kernel 2.4
(brazilfw), under 2.6 there are no errors at all.

On Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:13:04 +0100, Henrik Carlqvist
<Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com> wrote:

>Shadow <sh@dow> wrote:
>> I would rather a "bare" system I could just add stuff to.
>> Maybe 4-6 hours work involved.
>
>If you find your time valuable you might find it cheaper to buy a hardware
>firewall/router for less than 50 euro. However, bying instead of building
>would spoil all thefun :-)
>
>I know what can happen when you start building something. A few years ago
>I started a project described at http://poolhem.se/video/ , that project
>has been almost finished for a few years now. Maybe next weekend...
Exactly .....

>
>regards Henrik

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:04:06 +0000 (UTC), Tom Newton
<tom@server.invalid> wrote:


>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.
Your operating system and all programs are also mounted in
that 47 Mb of ram ? If so I am very interested.
Remember, this is a complete system using ram as a HD, no swap
at all ....
>
>Something is REALLY wrong with your setup. I don't know what, though.
Um
>
>I'd suggest posting the output of ps aux and taking a look at what's
>going on with lsof.
>
>Tom
>