SUMMARY Reusing the cdrom drive

Hello,

I can confirm that Jeff has done an excellent job adding the functionality to
load LNX-BBC into a ram drive, thus freeing up the cdrom so that it can be used
for restores, etc. The old functionality still exists as the default behaviour
(for those who have memory limited systems). I think this should be incorporated
in a future version of LNX-BBC, it seems to require very little additional
disk space. Here is the link again:

 http://www.mock.com/bbcmods/


--
Best regards,
Alastair Munro


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On Wed, 2003-09-24 at 10:09, Seth David Schoen wrote:
> Alastair Munro writes:
> 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I have backups on cdr, and want to restore them under LNX-BBC. However, after
> > booting LNX-BBC the cdrom cannot be unmounted, as it says its busy. I can't see which
> > process has the cdrom open (did an lsof). I even tried to kill a couple of the
> > processes, to see if that makes a difference. Most of the utilities I want are
> > in the ram drive (I think), so I don't think I need to run stuff off the LNX-BBC
> > cdrom when accessing my cd.
> > 
> > Anyone any ideas how I can unmount the LNX-BBC cdrom, and swap if for one of my
> > backup cds? If if its a case that I can't use LNX-BBC after swapping the cds,
> > then I can always reboot LNX-BBC again. I'm just using LNX-BBC for hard disk
> > recovery.
> > 
> > Many thanks in advance.
> 
> Currently LNX-BBC can't do what you want at all, because it has a
> filesystem mounted from the CD.  All the LNX-BBC software is contained
> in that filesystem.  (The kernel, through the cloop driver, has the
> CD-ROM open -- not a user process.)  None of the LNX-BBC software is
> initially in the RAM disk.
> 
> I just read that the new Knoppix supposedly has a way of loading
> itself into memory, so that the CD can be ejected.  (I guess you have
> to have a lot of memory, since Knoppix uses a full CD.)  We've been
> talking about implementing that; among other things, it might make it
> practical to netboot LNX-BBC.
> 
> If you have a floppy drive, you might want to try using tomsrtbt.  (If
> not, you can boot tomsrtbt from a CD as an El Torito emulation mode
> image, and then you will probably be able to remove the CD and
> continue using tomsrtbt.)

I made a set of scripts for munging a lnxbbc image to do a few extra
things.  One of the features adds a boot option that reads the 
compressed image off the CD into a 50MB ramdisk, unmounts the CDROM,
and runs from ramdisk, leaving the CDROM free for restores and such. 
I use v2.1 of the lnx-bbx modified by these scripts to do just what 
Alastair is wanting to do.  

There are also some other scripts for inserting a new kernel into the 
disc image or using isolinux as the cdrom boot method, but you might 
not care about those.

   http://www.mock.com/bbcmods/

Let me know if you have any problems.

Jeff Mock <[email protected]>

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