[ale] CRISIS -> boot/root floppy needed..........

[Transam]

On Mon, Mar 03, 2003 at 08:27:14AM -0500, Courtney Thomas wrote:
> Good Morning !

> I am running RH6.1 because of an Oracle installation and need to leave 
> it alone for now, however, any guidance regarding SPECIFICS of upgrading 
> the OS and Oracle would be appreciated.

> Setup:
> 	bootup uses dpt_i2o		<- OS hard drive scsi driver
> 	oracle uses eata		<- scsi raid driver for oracle
> 	tape drive uses dc390x_ncr	<- scsi tape driver

> Dilemma:
> 	no boot/root floppy, other than a custom one, is going to have the 
> dpt_i2o & dc390x_ncr drivers, since they are non-standard scsi drivers. 
> So, the boot floppy must afford the opportunity to install dpt_i2o at 
> bootup, which is done by mkbootdisk under RH6.1.

> And, once the OS hard drive is up, the eata & dc390x_ncr modules must be 
> installed before unmounting the OS hard drive, to provide quiescent OS 
> and raid hard drives for tape backup. This assumes, of course, these 
> modules would remain available after OS hard drive unmounting.

> But, the aforedescribed boot floppy asks for a root floppy, which is not 
> provided AFAIK by RH6.1. I have more pressing needs than spending 
> unknown hours whittling away on such a root floppy.

> Is there a 'downloadable' root floppy that can meet these requirements ?

> If not, please precisely summarize the most efficient way to create said 
> root floppy.

Keep in mind that your Rescue boot floppy or Rescue boot and root floppies
or Rescue CD does NOT have to be the same distribution as what is on disk
nor does it need to be the same version nor even close.

The only requirement is that it has the drivers for the devices and
file systems you need to access (e.g., disk, tape if tape restore is needed,
ext2 and/or ext3, etc).

There are a few ways to deal with this:

1. Build a kernel with these devices built-in (not as loadable modules).
   Be sure to include the RAMDISK file system type.  If you are building
   for a Rescue boot and root floppy pair, be sure to include:

        rdev -r /dev/fd0 49152

   so that a RAMDISK will be set up and the process will prompt you
   to change floppies.

   Copy that kernel to a floppy to be your boot kernel.

2. Use tar to write the device drivers to a separate floppy, boot from
   Rescue media, use tar to load the device drivers to RAMDISK and
   use insmod to load to memory.

3. Build a custom Rescue root floppy that contains the device driver modules
   and a rc.local to load them.  Building a custom Rescue root floppy
   is explained in "Real World Linux Security"; check the index under
   "Rescue Disks, custom".

> Else, what do you recommend ?

> Appreciatively,
> Courtney

Bob Toxen
bob at verysecurelinux.com               [Please use for email to me]
http://www.verysecurelinux.com        [Network&Linux/Unix security consulting]
http://www.realworldlinuxsecurity.com [My book:"Real World Linux Security 2/e"]
Quality Linux & UNIX security and SysAdmin & software consulting since 1990.

"Microsoft: Unsafe at any clock speed!"
   -- Bob Toxen 10/03/2002
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