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[Dragora-users] Getting Dragora 2.2 Running on a USB Drive


From: David Friedman
Subject: [Dragora-users] Getting Dragora 2.2 Running on a USB Drive
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2018 01:45:09 -0400

Just wanted to share my experience getting Dragora 2.2
running on a USB drive.

So I don't have a specific question but figured maybe this could
be useful to other people who might be trying to do the same
thing or something similar.

It might come up in some searches.

I used the same approach as I had done with CRUX back in
September of 2016.

https://lists.crux.nu/pipermail/crux/2016-September/005188.html

I didn't really know exactly how to do it, but bumped around a
bit and eventually got it going.

Getting Dragora onto the USB drive went smoothly. I let it
know the partition to install to and so the Dragora files were
copied there.

I didn't have Dragora install GRUB as I already had GRUB set up
when I installed OpenSUSE on another partition.

So then when I tried to use GRUB to boot that parition it failed,
as it couldn't access it.

So to get it to work I first tried using the busybox (v1.22.1)
and other files that I used for CRUX. I created the initramfs
with cpio and let GRUB know where to find the initramfs file on
the partition.  Once I got a shell I figured I could try to mount
the relevant partition.

When I booted it up though it didn't work. There seemed to be
some kind of incompatibility between the kernel and busybox.

So then I tried using the busybox (v1.19.4) and other files from
the Dragora installation USB thumb drive.

I again created the initramfs using cpio. In the case of the CRUX
initramfs for the CRUX installation system it turns out that init
is a shell script, but in the case of Dragora init is a symbolic
link and so in Dragora installation startup processing is done in
/etc/rc.d/rc.S which then draws from /etc/profile.

For making my initramfs I tried commenting out most of the lines
of code in /etc/rc.d/rc.S.

I guess I was just looking for a minimal initialization so that I
could mount the relevant partition and then do switch_root as I
had with CRUX.

I think I commented out everything. It still booted up and I got
a shell. I was also still able to mount the relevant partition
(unlike with CRUX I didn't need to compile into the kernel
modules for reading a USB drive).

But then there wasn't any switch_root in the version of busybox
(v1.19.4) for Dragora 2.2.

I thought that maybe chroot would have similar functionality so I
tried that:

exec /sbin/chroot /newroot /sbin/init

But it didn't work.

So I tried downloading a more recent version of busybox from the
busybox site. (v1.21.1).

I could see that that version has switch_root when I ran it in
openSUSE, and when I tried it in the initramfs it still booted up
fine and I got a shell prompt.

I wasn't sure what setup I needed before doing the switch_root. I
tried going with very little, but it didn't work.

So I tried going with a setup similar to CRUX where init is a shell
script instead of a symbolic link as in the Dragora installation.

In the init file as a shell script I put in basically the same
processing as had been in the Dragora /etc/rc.d/rc.S (although
for my particular setup I didn't do anything with RAID or LVM as
I don't have those).

After doing that setup I then mount the relevant partition.

Then I undo all of that setup which was done prior to the
mounting step.

Then I do the switch_root which goes to the init on the Dragora
partition.

(I can include the init shell script that I currently have to
boot Dragora at the end of this email, so of course, one would
need to modify it for another particular setup)

There was one more wrinkle to work out.

When I did the installation it turned out that the USB drive was
/dev/sdc. The thumb drive was /dev/sdb and the hard drive itself
was /dev/sda.

When it booted it looked for /dev/sdc which didn't exist because
there was no thumb drive and the USB drive was /dev/sdb.

All I had to do was change /etc/fstab so that it was /dev/sdb
instead of /dev/sdc.

I was able to get Xfce running and it seems to run pretty
fast. With the focus on simplicity I figured that might be the
case.

So right now I'm composing this email in Gmail using IceCat
running on Dragora.

David Friedman

P.S. Here is the init script.

I do not think I need all of those sleeps, but I put them in
there in the course of testing.

This came about from taking different parts from
Dragora and also from CRUX.


#!/bin/bash
#
#

mkdir -p /bbin

/bin/busybox --install -s /bbin

PATH=/bbin:/bin:/sbin
export PATH

echo "Mounting proc..."
mount -t proc proc /proc
sleep 2
echo "Mounting sys..."
mount -t sysfs sysfs /sys
sleep 2

echo "Mounting tmpfs..."
mount -vn -t tmpfs tmpfs /run -o mode=0755
sleep 2

echo "Mounting devtmpfs..."
mount -vn -t devtmpfs devtmpfs /dev
sleep 2

echo "Mounting devpts..."
mkdir -p --mode=0755 /dev/pts
mount -vn -t devpts devpts /dev/pts -o mode=0620,gid=4
sleep 2

echo "Starting udev daemon:  /sbin/udevd --daemon"
udevd --daemon
sleep 2

udevadm trigger --type=subsystems
udevadm trigger --type=devices


rm -f /etc/mtab*
ln -s /proc/mounts /etc/mtab


echo "Now about to attempt mount of /dev/sdb2..."
sleep 3
mkdir /newroot
mount /dev/sdb2 /newroot
sleep 1

echo "Stopping udev daemon..."
udevadm control --exit
sleep 1

echo "Unmounting devpts..."
umount /dev/pts
sleep 1

echo "Unmounting devtmpfs..."
umount /dev
sleep 1

echo "Unmounting tmpfs..."
umount /run
sleep 1

echo "Unmounting sys..."
umount /sys
sleep 1

echo "Unmounting proc..."
umount /proc
sleep 1


echo "Now doing switch_root..."

exec /bbin/switch_root /newroot  /sbin/init

echo "Something went wrong...going to a shell..."

exec /bin/bash



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