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Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 15:28:17 +0100 (BST)
From: Tigran Aivazian <tigran@veritas.com>
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To: Dead2 <dead2@circlestorm.org>
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Subject: Re: Initrd or Cdrom as root
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On Wed, 15 May 2002, Dead2 wrote:
> So, I now have a new problem I hope someone can help me out with.
> It now mounts the cdrom as root like it should, but then gives me the error:
> "Warning: unable to open an initial console."
>
> I have checked everything I can think of, but if someone could point me to
> exactly generates this error, I would be forever grateful.

Yes, that is well-known.

Unix root filesystem cannot be readonly in its entirety. Linux is much
better, but even Linux is not perfect.

So, what I do is --- I prepare the /var, /home, /etc, /dev in a tar.gz
file and place it on CD. Then, from rc.sysinit I mount tmpfs on those
points and unpack the tar.gz from / --- thus ending up with readwrite /var
/home /etc and /dev. (you could avoid /dev issue by using devfs but then
you will have other little problems to deal with :)

Btw, you will encounter lots of other problems, of course. Making a Linux
distribution is fun (I enjoy it) but it is not as trivial as some think.
It is certainly not a "pile of rpms" and Red Hat certainly do _not_ "just
package some free software" and sell it. Even without going into the level
of producing _general purpose_ distribution (which is what Red Hat Linux
is), making a (even specialized) Linux distribution is non-trivial. But it
is fun, try it :)

Regards
Tigran