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                        make_bifrost-minihowto
                         22nd December, 2010

                          Markku Antikainen

Revision: 2100-10-25:
	  Use 0 indicating no swap space in example
	  Updated to bifrost-rc-7.0-2.tar.gz	  


What you need
-------------

* A Linux with dd, fdisk, and resize2fs
* The make_bifrost script, in newer bifrost releases or /contrib directory
* Current Bifrost/Linux package, eg. bifrost-rc-7.0-2.tar.gz
  http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/os/Linux/distributions/bifrost/v7
* USB-memory stick
* Optional packets in tarballs (optional)


Installation
------------

Step 1: Find the device name of USB stick

Find the appropriate device name for the USB stick. Look in dmesg for
something like:

scsi 9:0:0:0: Direct-Access  SanDisk  Cruzer Micro  0.1  PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
SCSI device sdb: 2001888 512-byte hdwr sectors (1025 MB)
sdb: Write Protect is off
sdb: Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sdb: assuming drive cache: write through


This gives the device name for the USB memory. In our case sdb. The
script will use fdisk, mke2fs and grub to make a bootable Bifrost
system.

Step 2: Use the script to create bootable media

Usage of the make_bifrost

sudo ./make_bifrost <device name> <partition size> <boot image> [archives]

<device name>     Device name of the USB device (eg. sda). Without the 
                  preceeding "/dev/"!
<partition size>  The size of the first (main) partition. Rest of the 
                  space is used for swap partition. If set to 0, no swap 
                  partition is created and all space is used for the first 
                  partition.
<boot image>      File name of a gziped image file containing a bootable 
                  ext2 filesystem. Normally boot_image.gz, which is 
                  included in this package.
[archives]        List of tarball-archives to be installed. One of these
                  should be the actual Bifrost archive (eg. 
                  bifrost-rc-7.0-2.tar.gz).


Example
-------

root@bt:~# ./make_bifrost sde 0 boot_image.gz bifrost-rc-7.0-2.tar.gz
Will erase /dev/sde and load /root/boot_image.gz onto it
Is this correct (yes is affirmative)?
yes
dd:ing the archive to the device
2048+0 records in
2048+0 records out
8388608 bytes (8.4 MB) copied, 1.3561 s, 6.2 MB/s
Rebuilding partition table on /dev/sde...
Making filesystem with one main partition and one swap partition.
e2fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
bifrost: 24/2000 files (0.0% non-contiguous), 479/8000 blocks
resize2fs 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
Resizing the filesystem on /dev/sde1 to 2056288 (1k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/sde1 is now 2056193 blocks long.


Disk /dev/sde: 8011 MB, 8011120640 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 973 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00085bd3

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sde1   *           1         256     2056288+  83  Linux
/dev/sde2             257         973     5759302+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
Making /dev/sde2 as a swap filesystem
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 5759296 KiB
no label, UUID=1dc41c2c-8683-46ea-bb4d-d4607099e958
Mounting /dev/sde1 on /tmp/makeusbmem-mp
Adding optional package bifrost-rc-7.0-2.tar.gz
Done - cleaning up.