Copying and Editing Files to filesystem Image

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Now we need to copy the files from the hard drive (except /proc) onto the filesystem image. The following commands, assume you are using slackware, and no other drives/devices are mounted under /mnt

cp -a /bin /tmp/loop
cp -a /boot /tmp/loop
cp -a /dev /tmp/loop
cp -a /etc /tmp/loop
cp -a /home /tmp/loop
cp -a /lib /tmp/loop
cp -a /mnt /tmp/loop
mkdir /tmp/loop/proc
cp -a /root /tmp/loop
cp -a /sbin /tmp/loop
cp -a /usr /tmp/loop
cp -a /var /tmp/loop

If all goes according to plan, you should not have got any disk space warning messages, otherwise, start again with a larger filesystem image file.

We now need to edit some of the files so that it boots ok, starting with the /tmp/loop/etc/fstab file. This need to be changed, so it doesn't try mounting a hard drive. We need to change the line for the root mount point from something like

/dev/hda1    /      ext3     defaults    1   1

to this

/dev/fd2     /      ext2     defaults    1   1

So the ramdisk loads correctly. Make sure there are no lines for a swap disk, as the CF card won't be using one. Use whatever editor you are comfortable with. I use jed, because it's easy to use. If you are using slackware, and ext2 then we need to edit the /tmp/loop/etc/rc.d/rc.S file to stop it doing disk checks You need to remove the following chunk from the file

# Test to see if the root partition is read-only...
READWRITE=no
if echo -n >> "Testing filesystem status"; then
...
...
    read junk;
  fi
fi # Done checking root filesystem

So the file should now look like

...
...
# enable swapping
/sbin/swapon -a

# Code You Just Deleted

# Any /etc/mtab that exists here is old, so we delete ...
/bin/rm -f /etc/mtab*
# Remounting the / partition will initialize the new /etc/mtab:
/sbin/mount -w -o remount /
...
...

Remember we are editing the files on the filesystem image (/tmp/loop), not the live files in /etc, so we can always do it again, if we get it wrong.

Now unmount the filesystem image and compress it ready for copying onto the CF card.

umount /tmp/loop
gzip -c -9 /tmp/lite > /tmp/lite.gz

Once compressed, the filesystem image is usually only a third of its original size. This allows for a smaller CF card to be used if necessary. The image is compressed so it loads into memory faster from the CF card.

Creating A filesystem Image << Copying and Editing Files >> Setup CF Card