ariane Version 2

Some years ago I made ariane. This was a small Linux system which booted from a CD-ROM into the computer's RAM and run from there. No harddisk installation was required. Some months ago I decided that it was time to make an updated version.

The original ariane was based on Linux From Scratch. Nowadays I like Debian. So the first question was to either recompile some current tarballs to get something LFS based or to figure out how I can produce a minimal Debian system. I found that Debian make this question absolutely easy so I chose this option. And because ariane is a Debian installation the documentation focuses on "How to create a RAM Linux".

1. Creating the Linux Image explains how to create a minimal Debian image starting with a plain Debian installation.

2. Creating the Initial RAM Disk - Modern Linuxes require an initial ramdisk which is loaded before the real system starts. In ariane the task for the initrd is to locate the Linux image and to load it into RAM. Or in other words, here is most of ariane.

3. Creating a Bootable USB Stick shows how to create a bootable USB stick using the Linux and initrd image. Of course you can create a bootable CD-ROM too.

If you ask yourself why another Debian based Linux CD-ROM distribution, this is not a live distribution which starts and runs from CD-ROM. Once ariane is up and running you can remove the boot medium because the whole Linux system is inside the computer's RAM.

Getting Started

Fetch the required files from the download area:

• either initrd.img-2.6.18-4-686, linux.tgz and vmlinuz-2.6.18-4-686 to get a bootable CD-ROM or USB stick (use "Save target as" from the link's context menu in case your broser displays the files as text),
• or the ISO image ariane.iso to create a bootable CD-ROM.

Then boot from your media (whatever it is) and login as root, no password required.

Other Documents

• Creating a Bootable CD-ROM - I have no idea if creating a bootable Linux CD is trivial or not because I don't have the
  BootableCdRom - text/yawk

• System Boot Sequence - The boot sequence - Very simplified the system's boot process work as follows:
  SystemBootSequence - text/yawk

• Using an ext2 USB Stick - This setup is very similar to using vfat formatted USB stick. The major differences are -
  ExtFsUsbStick - text/yawk