LinuxBBQ Szalonna "release" notes
Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2015 8:28 pm
While we wait for bacon's slackware spin, here is something for the extremely brave and foolish among you.
Remember my "you won't like it window manager?" -- well here is "you won't like it Linux." Created with buildroot, using busybox init and busybox for coreutils, Szalonna has no installer and no package manager. It does have most of what I need in a basic install, including a siduction 32-bit kernel, X and two window managers, vim, alsa, tmux, tinyradio, and links as a graphical browser. It is possible to add packages to the running system, and I can provide instructions if anyone actually uses this.
If you feel brave enough and want to try it, here are the instructions.
What you will need
* A machine with intel or amd graphics. nvdia graphics will not work in X without major modifications!
* Another Linux system controlling GRUB on the machine where you intend to install Szalonna. Any system will do; I use Debian stable, but that's just my preference. It's handy if this system is also 32-bit, in case you need to chroot into the Szalonna system, but it's not required.
* A small unused partition on the target machine. The unpacked buildroot system is less than 300M (and a lot of that is the siduction kernel; if you have a 32-bit custom kernel or can learn how to build one, the system will be much smaller), so any small partition will do. If you want to be able to install more stuff later, 1 or 2 G would be good.
* The Szalonna tar file. Get it from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxbb ... 15uxbd.tgz
* A grub.cfg stub. Here is what I use:
NOTE! If you are using these instructions to install Kermacs, the initrd is called "initrd.img" not "initrd".
What you will do
* Boot into the GRUB-controlling system, and put a file system on the target partition. I use ext4, but it's up to you. Please don't use btrfs.
* As root, mount the target, and unpack the archive onto the target. If the target is /dev/sda7:
* Add the grub.cfg stub I gave you to your grub.cfg; either using 40_custom or directly editing grub.cfg (if you use 40_custom remember to run update-grub). Make sure you change both partition designators to the partition where you unpacked the archive!
* Umount the target, reboot, sacrifice a goat and pray. Login as "bbq" (password "bbq"). Wired networking is set up with busybox udhcp; if you want to use static networking instead, modify /sbin/rc. Don't even think about wireless.
* "startx" to start X (duh). The default WM is twm (right-click for a menu); if you want to use evilwm, edit ~/.xinitrc.
* sudo works, or you can su to root if necessary (root has no password).
* env-info does not work on this system, so I included a similar script called "bbinfo"
* scrot is not included, but imlib2_grab can be used for that important "it werks" scrot.
Thanks to DebianJoe and GekkoP for testing. Thanks to machinebacon for encouraging us to move away from Debian and try something completely different.
There are some licensing issues with buildroot (I'm supposed to have my "legal department" look into this) so this system is highly experimental and not for wide distribution. But it's so weird I'm not really worried about that.
This system is provided with the most minimal support you can imagine. If you ask a question, you might get an answer, but no promises. Think of anything that breaks or does not work as a learning opportunity. Good luck.
Remember my "you won't like it window manager?" -- well here is "you won't like it Linux." Created with buildroot, using busybox init and busybox for coreutils, Szalonna has no installer and no package manager. It does have most of what I need in a basic install, including a siduction 32-bit kernel, X and two window managers, vim, alsa, tmux, tinyradio, and links as a graphical browser. It is possible to add packages to the running system, and I can provide instructions if anyone actually uses this.
If you feel brave enough and want to try it, here are the instructions.
What you will need
* A machine with intel or amd graphics. nvdia graphics will not work in X without major modifications!
* Another Linux system controlling GRUB on the machine where you intend to install Szalonna. Any system will do; I use Debian stable, but that's just my preference. It's handy if this system is also 32-bit, in case you need to chroot into the Szalonna system, but it's not required.
* A small unused partition on the target machine. The unpacked buildroot system is less than 300M (and a lot of that is the siduction kernel; if you have a 32-bit custom kernel or can learn how to build one, the system will be much smaller), so any small partition will do. If you want to be able to install more stuff later, 1 or 2 G would be good.
* The Szalonna tar file. Get it from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxbb ... 15uxbd.tgz
* A grub.cfg stub. Here is what I use:
Code: Select all
# adjust sda7 and hd0,msdos7 to the real root
menuentry 'Szalonna32 (on /dev/sda7)' {
set root='(hd0,msdos7)'
linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda7 rw
initrd /initrd
}What you will do
* Boot into the GRUB-controlling system, and put a file system on the target partition. I use ext4, but it's up to you. Please don't use btrfs.
* As root, mount the target, and unpack the archive onto the target. If the target is /dev/sda7:
Code: Select all
# mount /dev/sda7 /mnt
# tar xvf <path-to>/szalonna32-1215uxbd.tgz -C /mnt* Umount the target, reboot, sacrifice a goat and pray. Login as "bbq" (password "bbq"). Wired networking is set up with busybox udhcp; if you want to use static networking instead, modify /sbin/rc. Don't even think about wireless.
* "startx" to start X (duh). The default WM is twm (right-click for a menu); if you want to use evilwm, edit ~/.xinitrc.
* sudo works, or you can su to root if necessary (root has no password).
* env-info does not work on this system, so I included a similar script called "bbinfo"
* scrot is not included, but imlib2_grab can be used for that important "it werks" scrot.
Thanks to DebianJoe and GekkoP for testing. Thanks to machinebacon for encouraging us to move away from Debian and try something completely different.
There are some licensing issues with buildroot (I'm supposed to have my "legal department" look into this) so this system is highly experimental and not for wide distribution. But it's so weird I'm not really worried about that.
This system is provided with the most minimal support you can imagine. If you ask a question, you might get an answer, but no promises. Think of anything that breaks or does not work as a learning opportunity. Good luck.
