On Mon, 3 Nov 2008, Dag Wieers wrote:

We have a big issue where it works for simple initramfs archives (the minimal one), but it consistently fails for big ones (40MB). While it does work for the RIPLinux initramfs which is 45MB.

We have to make the ramdisk_size extremely big (now using 128000) for my image. The original uncompressed RIPLinux initramfs is 90M. Ours is 105M :-/ (And missing the kernel modules, we might want to make an all-in CentOS kernel)

I guess we have to discuss some of the details, what we want to accomplish and how we want to do that.

I am interested in:

- a tool to generate custom initramfs for specific applications to boot directly into, eg ncurses frontends for wiping or ghosting disks, troubleshooting hardware and network problems (this is what I need right now) and other things

- a ready-to-go rescue image that people can install in their boot-loader (or maybe we can provide by default ?) so that in case of a real problem (something important for booting trashed) they can find the problem and fix it

- a full RIPLinux alike recovery CD including documentation and tools to recover systems (ISO, USB, PXE) using the default CentOS kernel

- same full recovery CD with a very recent kernel with more features, the same initramfs could be used for this and the above if all modules are compiled in the kernel (like with RIPLinux)

RIPLinux currently also has an X version with a lot more stuff like firefox, flash, minimal window manager, gparted, ... but for me that is not a priority. A full-fledged live cd seems more appropriate for a graphical environment.