Specification of Fli4l Harddisk Installation

Partition names

Describe naming of partitions depending on ide/scsi, primary/secondary ide controller, primary/extended partitions ...

Syslinux Spec

Partition and Filesystem

• boot partition has to be
  • primary
  • fat (syslinux doesn't understand fat32)
  • active (bootable)
• opt and data partition ext3 file system
• swap partition

  • Partition type	Size	Format command
    boot partition
    1	< 32MB	mkdosfs -F 12 /dev/device
    4	?	mkdosfs -F 16 /dev/device
    opt and data partition
    83		mke2fs -j /dev/device
    swap partition
    82	multiple of 32 MB	mkswap /dev/device

Syslinux Installation

• Linux

  •  syslinux /dev/device 

• Windows

  •  syslinux drive

/boot/hd.cfg - Config file

• during boot fli4l reads /boot/hd.cfg and mounts all partition specified there
• variables and meanings

  Variable	Meaning
  hd_boot	boot device, not used
  hd_opt	opt partition, ext3 partition containing fli4l files
  hd_swap	swap partition
  hd_data	additional data ext3 partition
  recoverytime	recovery time, default 60s

Fli4l configuration and Files to transfer

• BOOT_TYPE='hd'
• KERNEL_BOOT_OPTION='boot=device' # device without /dev/ prefix
  • Fli4l searches for valid partitions and mounts the very first as /boot to read the Fli4l files from there. Fli4l checks for the following partitions: hda1, hdc1, nftla1, sda1. If your partition is not found or not the first valid partition you have to specify boot= as kernel parameter
• mount fli4l partition to /boot

  •      umount /boot
         mount -t vfat -w /dev/device /boot

• Files to transfer to /boot
  • kernel
  • rootfs.img
  • opt_tar.bz2
  • rc.cfg
  • syslinux.cfg
  • hd.cfg (written by yourself)

Other Bootloaders

Requirements

• initrd support
• kernel command line support
• examples: grub, lilo, loadlin

Partition and Filesystem

• boot type hd
  • boot partition
    • any partition the bootloader can handle
    • files on boot partition:
      • kernel
      • rootfs.img
  • fli4l partition
    • use KERNEL_BOOT_OPTION='boot=device' to specify your fli4l partition
    • any fat partition formatted with vfat files system
    • files on boot partition:
      • opt_tar.bz2
      • rc.cfg
      • hd.cfg (written by yourself)
• boot type integrated
  • boot partition
    • any partition the bootloader can handle
    • files on boot partition:
      • kernel
      • rootfs.img
  • append hd.cfg to rootfs.img by placing it into your config dir under boot/hd.cfg and adding the following line to opt/hd.txt:

    •  mount         yes       rootfs:boot/hd.cfg mode=555 flags=sh

Command Line

• take the APPEND line of the generated syslinux.cfg and append it to the kernel command line using the feature of your boot loader

Examples

Add your examples here ...