This is Darkstar Resque Disk v.2.3.99-pre9-A
Copyright (C) Oct 2000 PhysTech Inc https://phystech.com
For installation instructions refer to INSTALL file.
INTRODUCTION
Darkstar Resque Disk is intended to allow commonly configured PC
to boot into minimal Linux system with enough capabilities to
repair an existing Linux hard disk installation or to
install from a variety of media including network.
This Resque Disk allows you to do the following:
1. load additional kernel modules for 2.3.99-pre9 kernel
2. partition your IDE/ATA or SCSI drives with fdisk
3. create ext2 filesystems with mke2fs
4. mount ext2 and iso9660 filesystems
5. edit, copy, move, and delete files on mounted filesystems
6. perform ext2 filesystems repair with e2fsck
7. configure your Ethernet interface(s)
8. ftp files from FTP server on the network
9. format floppy disks
10.include additional programs and utilites
SUPPORTED HARDWARE
This Resque Disk standalone comes with the support for
the following hardware devices:
1. ATA/(E)IDE and ATAPI cdrom drives and hard disks
2. AIC7xxx based Adaptec SCSI controllers
3. SCSI cdrom drives
4. ISO9660 (cdrom) filesystem
5. Intel EtherExpress Pro/100+ and compatible network adapters
6. 3COM 3c59x EtherLink and compatible network adapters
7. NE2000 series ISA network adapters
8. Standard 1.44M floppy disk drives
9. ext2 filesystem
TOOLS AND UTILITIES
This Resque Disk standalone comes with the following
tools and utilies:
1. edit (e3 editor). Type 'edit' for quick online help.
2. fdisk. Use 'fdisk /dev/hda' to view/add/delete partitions
on first IDE hard drive. Similarly use 'fdisk /dev/sda'
to view/add/delete partition on first SCSI hard drive.
3. e2fsck. Type 'e2fsck -h' for quick online help.
Use 'e2fsck /dev/hda1' to check and repair ext2 filesystem
on first partition of first IDE hard drive. Similarly
use e.g. 'e2fsck /dev/sdb3' to check and repair ext2
filesystem on third partition of second SCSI drive.
4. mke2fs. Type 'mke2fs -h' for quick online help.
Use e.g. 'mke2fs -m 2 /dev/sdb1' to create ext2 filesystem
on the first partition of second SCSI drive reserving
2 percent of disk space for superuser.
5. mkswap. Type 'mkswap -h' for quick online help. This command
creates Linux swap space on a disk partition. Example:
'mkswap /dev/sda3' will create swap space on third partition
of first SCSI disk. Please note that before you create swap
space the corresponding disk partition must be tagged as 'Linux swap'
using 'fdisk'.
6. mkdir, mknod, ln - these commands create directories, special
device files, and symbolic and hard links. Use 'chmod' command to
change permissions on files.
7. mount/umount. Use these command to mount/umount supported
filesystems. You may have to create mount point first before using
mount command. Example:
mkdir /mnt
mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /mnt
creates /mnt mount point and then mounts ext2 filesystem on first
partition of first SCSI drive as /mnt.
To mount first SCSI cdrom drive do
mkdir /mnt
mount -t iso9660 /dev/sr0 /mnt
8. ifconfig,route. Use these commands to configure network interfaces.
Usually, if your network card has been correctly detected
all you need to do is to type
'ifconfig eth0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx' where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP
address you want to assign to eth0 interface.
If you want to access a server on remote network you will
have to set up a route to that network using 'route' command.
Example: route add -net 0.0.0.0 gw xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the gateway IP address
9. ftp. After you assigned IP address to the network interface using
'ifconfig' command (see item 8 above), you can use 'ftp' command to
ftp files from FTP servers. Please note that you have to use IP
addresses, not hostnames when running 'ftp' with this Resque Disk
since no name resolution capabilities are included here
due to the disk space limitation.
10.insmod/modprobe/rmmod/lsmod - use these commands to handle
additional modules. Normally Resque Disk upon boot tries to
load all included modules. If you however want to load some
additional modules from another disk, you can use insmod utility.
Please be aware that the modules must be compiled for kernel
version 2.3.99-pre9. Another case when you might want to use
insmod command is to load module(s) with some additional
parameters. Example of loading aic7xxx SCSI driver with
additional parameters:
insmod aic7xxx aic7xxx='verbose.irq_trigger:1.extended'
Most typical cases when one may need to use additional parameters
for modules is with network card drivers.
One can supply explicit IO addresses and IRQ numbers for the
driver to probe at to make sure the network card is detected
correctly. Example for e.g. NE2000 driver:
insmod ne.o io='0x300,0x280' irq=0
11.lilo Linux loader is supplied along with sample config file and
boot record file /etc/boot.b to repair linux setups using Resque Disk.
You have to edit config file before running lilo to customize for
your particular setup. For quick help on using lilo type 'lilo --help'.
For complete documentation on Lilo and other Linux utilites visit
http://www.linuxdoc.org
12.fdformat. This program formats floppy diskettes. Use the following
examples to format floppy diskette for 1.44M and 1.72M:
fdformat /dev/fd0H1440
fdformat /dev/fd0H1722
NOTE
You may need to mount floppy (ext2), cdrom (iso9660), or hard disk (ext2)
filesystems to load additional device drivers or use other programs not
included in this Resque Disk.
The latest versions of Darkstar Resque Disk are
available from https://phystech.com/download/
Please send your comments about this Resque Disk
to author: phystech@hotmail.com
©1998 PhysTech, Inc. All rights reserved. Last change: Oct.8, 2000