Re: tlug: Linux and MO disks

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Felix" == Felix Morley Finch <felix@example.com> writes:

    >>> In article
    >>> <000801bd6ffe$1577f000$1302a8c0@example.com>,
    >>> "Jonathan Byrne--3Web" <jq@example.com> writes:
    >> I'm not highly familiar with MO disks, so I'd like to ask a
    >> couple of basic questions on using them with Linux:

    >> 1) Can Linux be booted from an MO disk?

If worst comes to worst, many MO disks have a jumper which turns it
into a hard disk, in the sense that you can no longer safely exchange
media without losing data.  However, you'd probably have to fiddle
with the partitions, and it would have to live wherever C: drives live 
on the bus.

    >> 2) Assuming the answer to the above is "yes," would an
    >> extremely small (only there for the purpose of backing up and
    >> restoring the system) fit on a 230 MB MO disk?

As long as you don't insist on keeping your full-length "Gone with the 
Wind" MPEG as the screen saver, yes.

    >> 3) If we're still on a yes roll here, can the boot device also
    >> be the backup/restore device, or does its containing the root
    >> file system preclude this?

    Felix> You might have to do like floppies, where the floppy
    Felix> includes a soon-to-be ramdisk file system, with the
    Felix> necessary commands.  I have forgotten the details of how
    Felix> this is set up.

That's because the file system is compressed.  Do a df on the RAM
disk, you'll see it won't fit on a 1.44MB floppy.

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