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11. Resources and pointers.

When retrieving a package, always get the latest version unless you have good reasons for not doing so.

11.1 Pre-made bootdisks.

These are sources for distribution bootdisks. Please use one of the mirror sites to reduce the load on these machines.

In addition to the distribution bootdisks, the following rescue disk images are available. Unless otherwise specified, these are available in the directory http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/recovery/

11.2 Rescue packages.

Several packages for creating rescue disks are available on sunsite.unc.edu. With these packages you generally specify a set of files for inclusion and the software automates (to varying degrees) the creation of a bootdisk. See http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/recovery/!INDEX.html for more information. Check the file dates carefully -- some of these packages have not been updated in several years and will not support the creation of a compressed root filesystem loaded into ramdisk. To the best of our knowledge, Yard is the only package that will.

11.3 Graham Chapman's shell scripts

Graham Chapman has written a set of scripts that may be useful as examples of how to create bootdisks. In previous versions of this HOWTO the scripts appeared in an appendix, but they have been deleted from the documented and placed on a web page:

http://www.zeta.org.au/~grahamc/linux.html

You may find it convenient to use these scripts, but if so, read the instructions carefully -- for example, if you specify the wrong swap device, you will find your root filesystem has been throroughly and permanently erased. Be sure you have it correctly configured before you use it!

11.4 LILO -- the Linux loader.

Written by Werner Almesberger. Excellent boot loader, and the documentation includes information on the boot sector contents and the early stages of the boot process.

Ftp from ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/lilo/. It is also available on Sunsite and mirrors.

11.5 Linux FAQ and HOWTOs.

These are available from many sources. Look at the usenet newsgroups news.answers and comp.os.linux.announce.

The FAQ is available from http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/faqs/linux-faq and the HOWTOs from http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO.

Most documentation for Linux may be found at The Linux Documentation Project homepage.

If desperate, send mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the word ``help'' in the message, then follow the mailed instructions.

11.6 Ramdisk usage.

An excellent description of the how the new ramdisk code works may be found with the documentation supplied with the Linux kernel. See /usr/src/linux/Documentation/ramdisk.txt. It is written by Paul Gortmaker and includes a section on creating a compressed ramdisk.

11.7 The Linux boot process.

For more detail on the Linux boot process, here are some pointers:


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