Linux CD-ROM Game System

The initrd-game.img itself has been completed. Next, we make a floppy disk that built in initrd and test it for booting. This floppy disk image will be burned into a CD-ROM as an El Torito booting image finally.

For making of the floppy disk, we use a floppy disk that the mkbootdisk command creates as a template.

The concrete procedure is the following:

(making of a boot floppy disk)
----
  ... insert a new floppy disk ...
# /sbin/mkbootdisk -v 2.2.14-1vl6
# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy  # *Note
# rm /mnt/floppy/initrd.img   # remove what mkbootdisk made, which may not exist
# cp -p /boot/initrd-game.img /mnt/floppy/initrd-game.img
# vi /mnt/floppy/etc/lilo.conf
  ... see below for lilo.conf ...
# vi /mnt/floppy/boot/message
  ... see below for /boot/message ...
# /sbin/lilo -r /mnt/floppy   # Install LILO last
Added linux *
# umount /mnt/floppy

*Note:

You may not input a command just as "mount /mnt/floppy" here. In Vine 2.0, the floppy disk will be mounted with a nodev option because of a description of /etc/fstab's /dev/fd0 entry has an owner option. Then each device file in the floppy disk doesn't work so that LILO cannot be installed.

We modify the /mnt/floppy/etc/lilo.conf in the floppy disk as follows. There may be a description for rescue which mkbootdisk made but we can remove it entirely.

boot=/dev/fd0
timeout=30
message=/boot/message
prompt
image=/vmlinuz-2.2.14-1vl6
        label=linux
        root=0x101    # This must not be root=0x100, but actual value is ignored
        initrd=/initrd-game.img   # specify the initrd for the game

It is not concerned with the system, but we can write a game message in /mnt/floppy/boot/message as we like, then a content of it will be displayed in boot with LILO. I write as follows:

Linux CD-ROM game system "circuslinux"

We must execute the lilo command with a "-r" option as follows after modifying /etc/lilo.conf or /boot/message under /mnt/floppy.

# /sbin/lilo -r /mnt/floppy

Turning the floppy disk into a write-protect state, we boot the system from the floppy disk. It will take somewhat longer time because it is a floppy disk. The shell will be invoked from the linuxrc in the same way as what we saw in the previous booting test for the initrd-game itself. We mount a hard drive by the following command again.

# /cdmount /dev/hda1 /mnt/cdrom ext2  
           =========
               |
               +--- change it with your actual hard drive partition.

Exiting the shell, when the game starts, this test is completed.

Now, we reboot it again from a hard drive, and type "telinit 3" to start a normal system.

Then we save the image of the floppy disk as follows:

# mkdir /images
# dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/images/boot.img bs=1440k count=1