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There are several small distros designed to run on older hardware. Some, like tomsrtbt and coyote can run directly from a floppy, with no need for even a hard drive. Many of these started life as glorified rescue disks, but with the modular nature of Linux, it's possible, for example, to run a working mail-server on an old 386 with them.

You're an idiot. It's called SECURE shell for a reason. Sniff all the packets you want; they're encrypted, genius...

Not everything is of the size/complexity of RedHat.

I love it. This is a one-floppy Linux distribution which contains all the power tools you really need to demolish any computer.

When I feel sadistic, I'll boot up some co-worker's Windoze box with it, and they arrive facing an "ls" listing and an "# " prompt. Panic usually follows.

I think there are quite a few. It's seen as a challenge, and does have practical uses. Have a look at Toms Rootboot disk - it includes a web server, a telnet server, a telnet client, an nfs client, wget, gzip, bzip2, vi, a whole load of network drivers, and a tonne of other stuff, all compressed down onto one floppy disk. Only I've never quite been able to find the source code for any of it despite spending a small amount of time looking - possibly someone would be able to put me right on that one.

There are also lots of interesting articles on linuxassembly.org.

Andrew

Here's the Gentoo Forums link w/ instructions.

BTW, Tom's Root Boot is "muy bueno", it's got scads of NIC drivers (I've tried it on Intel Pro100, Intel EXP16 (!), 3Com 3c9xx, 3c509b, and an eight dollar Linksys 10/100 card. Wget is on there. It can create/mount ext2/3 and FAT16/32 partitions. I'm now using this at work to build up old PCs that need (spit) Windows 95 on them but have no CD-ROM. I just tarred up the CABs and threw them on a web server. Now I boot them w/ Tom's, fdisk, format FAT32, wget the CABs, reboot, build, ?????, Profit!!!. Huzzah!

Have you ever tried LRP (Linux Router Project)? I suppose no, because you don't get the "NFS mess" you talk about. I've seen it running from floppy disk and compact flash card, and it worked great.

Sure, you don't boot in 3 seconds when you do it from the floppy disk, put the flash card was a better anyway...! and you don't need to flash your BIOS everytime you want to upgrade...

There are a lot more of minimalist Linux distro that don't have this "NFS mess", like tomsrtbt and Small Linux... go to Linux.org to see a huge list of minimalist Linux distro! (of course, you need to select "minimalist" in the category box...)

To install LFS you must use an existing Linux install on the machine to create your LFS system, using the existing system's compiler and the 'chroot' command.

With Gentoo, I believe you can install it off an existing system as well, just by downloading the system tarball, untarring it on a new partition, and again using the 'chroot' command to then compile and install the system.

If you don't have an existing system, you can just use a Linux boot floppy such as tomsrtbt, boot with that, set up the network/internet connection, and then download/chroot from there, which is what I did on a laptop with no bootable CDROM drive.

Try it!
Mark.

Whenever I need a boot floppy, I use tomsrtbt. It helped me install Gentoo on my old p120 laptop, which doesn't have a bootable CDROM drive.

Cheers, Mark.

The guys and girls of the german c't magazine combined toms rescue boot disk with F-Prot for Linux and pressed it onto a CDROM shipped with the issue 13/2002. You can order this issue for 3 EUR + shipping (1 EUR is round about 1 US $).

If you can get internet access with that CDROM, you can even update the scanner and the data files. (And as a nice bonus, you get 600 MBytes Freeware and Shareware.)

Tux2000

You might want to also consider the software tools you might want to have. Specifically, I would recommend a mini-Linux distro such as Tomsrtbt ("Tom's floppy which has a root filesystem and is also bootable.")

The link to its ftp server seems to be missing...

If you want some working linux distro in a floppy you may look at Tom's. It's my favourite, it helps me install Gentoo Linux on some boxes cannot boot from CDROM.

Besides, you can find list of Linux floppy/CD distros here

Those of you looking for it can find it here. for other Linux floppy distros, check out this.

It also seems there are a few more mini *BSD 'distros' out there. Now we can add the embedded *BSD to the list! =)

Except that by doing this you

• Lose all security on your system as the OS install directory won't support file permissions, and
• Make it far more likely that you'll need to use that disk-analyzer, since you've just rejected a modern journalling filesystem in favour of the simplistic design used by DOS twenty years ago

IMHO, all wise Windows 2000 installations are NTFS-only. If I need to recover something from the disk, I'd use a bootable linux distribution.

Personally I use Tom's Root and Boot, a complete linux distribution on a single floppy, but I've been meaning to give Knoppix a try...

I have in my more or less constant posession an old AOL 3.0 floppy disk which has a working copy of something called tomsrtbt, which I have used countless times to rescue garbled Windoze partitions. 'Course, it can't handle NTFS, but networking support is amazing, and I have found it makes the world of difference for tasks like recovering from a screwed up Ghost client install, for instance. And the date thing is fun :)
It will be nice to have something which is, ahem, more full-featured - many of my users get nervous when there isn't eye candy to look at.

since there are over a 1000 posts, sorry if this is repeated.. i use a floppy for a mini distribution called toms [toms.net]. its fun to play around with. also linuxrouter [linuxrouter.org] is another distro that fits on a floppy and as the name implies is great as a router.

Tom's root and boot disk on a single floppy has been extreemly useful during hardware failures.

Virtually all of the programs listed here are free of charge and for use under Windows..."How about BeOS, *nix, Amiga, QNX, etc?", I am asked. Those who are comfortable using these operating systems need no such guide as this...

A little more checking reveals that you can easily burn a bootable CD with Tom's Root Boot. check it out. It's a great emergency "distro" and has saved me numerous times.

You mention Trinux in the article, which by default requires extra floppies or a network connection to work, it seems. Another great floppy-based "distro" is Tom's Root Boot. It's saved me several times. It has support for almost any device you could imagine, all packed on one floppy. Not quite a CD-based distro, but still very cool.

Actually it's not that hard.. You just need to have a boot disk that will allow you network support and some file transfer protocol. tomsrtbt and mulinux come to mind.
Instructions:
Mount the CD on some computer with a cd-rom and network support.
Follow boot disk instructions to get the computer that Gentoo Linux is going to be installed on running and the network up.
Look at Normal Instructions and Skip steps 1 - 5; Follow step 6 (partitions) and 7 (mounting); skip 8; and for step 9, instead of copying from cd-rom, copy stages from the network (using whatever protocol meets your fancy); then continue on with the rest of the instructions.

Herbix : "Herbix is a Linux server that fits on a floppy. It supports ipchains and can serve FTP, HTTP, IRC, DHCP, SMTP, and IDENT."

Mike's Jukebox Distro : "Mike's Jukebox Distro is really just a floppy image that you add to a CD full of mp3's, using it as the El-Torito boot image. It has a complete Linux kernel and madplay, along with BusyBox. A simple shell script uses "find" to get a list of all mp3's on the CD, and it then plays each of them in order. tty3 is used for the player output, tty1, and tty2 have shells to allow the user to "play" while it's playing music."

RIMiRadio : "RIMiRadio is a floppy disk distro of Linux and an Icecast server."

floppyfw : "Floppyfw is a router and simple firewall on one single floppy. It uses Linux basic firewall capabilities, and has a very simple packaging system. It is perfect for masquerading and securing networks on ADSL and cable lines, using both static IP, DHCP, and PPPoE, and provides a simple installation, which usually involves editing of only one file on the floppy."

BBIagent Router : "BBIagent is a single floppy Linux-based router for sharing a broadband Internet connection. It also serves as a firewall to prohibit intruders from accessing your LAN. You can create your own BBIagent router software (a diskette file image) on our server based on your hardware configuration (NICs) and connection protocol (e.g. PPPoE, PPPoATM or DHCP). It is very easy to install and use."

Coyote Linux : "Coyote Linux is a single floppy distribution for people who have an Internet connection that they wish to share with other computers on a LAN. In addition to connection sharing, it also provides firewall services to help protect the internal network. The goal of the Coyote project is to make it as quick and easy as possible to share an Internet connection."

Tom's RootBoot : "rtbt is the most Linux on one floppy disk for rescue recovery panic and emergencies, contains tools to keep in your shirt pockets, is useful whenever you can't use a hard drive and contains about 100 rescue tools."

Pocket Linux : "Pocket Linux is an almost minimal, one floppy linux system designed to quickly convert PC workstation into secure linux-based workstation using ssh to connect to remote host (other networking clients are also supported). It supports bootp for determining host IP and other network parameters (there's also manual configuration possible, but bootp is recommended). In addition to workstations equipped with a network card (ethernet or arcnet), you can also use Pocket Linux on a PC equipped with a modem. Modem is automatically detected and then PPP connection is made."

Trinux : "Trinux is a minimal Linux distribution that boots from a single floppy or CD-ROM, loads its packages from an FTP/HTTP server, IDE filesystem, or additional floppies, and runs entirely in RAM. Trinux contains the latest versions of popular network security tools that can be used to conduct security research, analyze network traffic, and perform vulnerability testing."

Hopefully this list is helpful to those of you just starting to think about tiny distros.

All the rave, those floppy disk linux distros. Over the past few years, I've learned to love tomsrtbt (Tom's RootBoot).

Then, last year, I found some Business Card CDRs, which hold 30-50mb and fit in your wallet.

Naturally, I wanted a super-utility boot disk. My ideal was high; mix tomsrtbt with a standard Win98 boot disk (essential for flashing) and a few other tools. Multiboot? Now there's a tough subject. Even with the best guide to making bootable cdroms I could find, it was hopelessly difficult.

When I saw this post on Slashdot, I knew I had to post this little story. In researching it, I actually found an answer to the question I wanted to pose to all of you; does anybody know of a linux distribution for these business card cdrs.

LNX-BBC is just that. Anybody tried it? Anybody know of another one? Anybody made a multi-boot linux/dos businesscard cdr? ...I want the iso!

And lets not forget BusyBox - which makes most of these distributions possible. Even Red Hat boot disks use BusyBox these days.

Ra for Tom.

Cheers, Andy!

The tomsrtbt boot disk. IMO, is by far the best rescue disk available. In 1.44 megs of space they've managed to pack over 160 common utilities, and that's not including the kernel modules! You can grab a copy of the boot image at http://www.toms.net/rb/
This thing has saved my ass several times.

", but the truth is, that's only true if you can see the one's and zero's yourself, and there aren't many of them.

Otherwise, you're using a device to copy it.
It's like prohibition.
"Pshaw, how can they prohibit ALCOHOL? I can make it myself using nothing but widely available, cheap-priced hardware from the grocery store. Heck, I could grow my own wheat and produce it from that."
Well guess what?
I'm 18 years old, and if I were living in Boston, I would have a great deal of difficulty buying alcohol. Like, to the point that I couldn't do it without someone's help, or without doing something like physically stealing it out of the store. And I'm on the resourceful side.

The fact is, if laws say "New law. Every digital device must now have one bit attached to the end of each packet, or for a stream, one bit every three bytes, even at the cost of special translators on each end of the line. Is your keyboard non-compliant? Then you need a translator before it hits the PS2 slot, so that if your keyboard sets the non-copy bit, it stays set.
Translate that bit across anything that moves stuff. Keep track of that bit in your file system. Have it completely transparent to everything, just an extra bit. And if it's set to 1 at any point down the chain, don't copy it to anything marked a file system."
Sure, hackers can circumvent this. I'm 18, and I know enough programming to grep my kernel source for "copy bit" and insert a few //'s in choice places before recompiling.
Sure this is "trivial", but so is "growing marijuana." I bet you're allowed to own marijuana seeds (hemp seeds?) if you don't grow the plant and don't distribute it. I bet it'll be the same way with kernel source. (Can have it, as long as you don't modify it to get rid of the copy bit.)

Last time the word marijauna showed up in a slashdot article? Never.

We're not complaining.

So let's not complain.

Paul T.

preemptively spelled a la Taco.


Note: this post done as AC because I can't log in to change my password without having it appear plaintext in the URL. Do you people have ANY idea what it's like to see your password plaintext? In the URL? Damn near gives me a heart attack. Same thing when a site "helpfully" sends me an e-post card with it in bright letters:
Username: whatever
Password: tipx9pa
Gah!! It's like having your housekeys mailed to you in a very, very thin envelope.
Of course, it doesn't help if you use 7-word diceware phrases for every password, which have 128 bits of entropy and are such a pain to generate and to remember that you make just one and use it on everything from slashdot to your encrypted file system. 128 bits of entropy. Unbreakable. Until it appears in the URL. And in the came-from logs of whatever site I visit next. And all over the local filesystem of wherever I log in with netscape or I.E. at a computer other than my own. Gah again! (Note: one trick I've learned is that if you want to permanently get rid of all traces of what URL's you've visited in netscape or I.E., simply run your filesystem through a few passes from dev/random. Here's linux on a floppy. for you to boot the target computer off of.)

fight to get the pre-installed Windows distribution overwritten with Linux

This shouldn't be hard. Either choose fdisk during the install, do fdisk from vt2 or 3 during the install, or use a Tom's RTBT and do:

d
6 # You may not have this one, but it won't hurt.
d
5 # ditto.
d
1
n
1
+15M
n
2
+256M
n
3 # This is a pretty shoddy partitioning scheme, but should be fine for a desktop.
[enter]
t
2
82
w

That should do the trick every time.

Well, I'd take WinRAR instead of WinZIP (its better, imho; its smaller; and it handles more file types). I'd probably also put TweakUI on there, as well as VNC (both the client and the server). A bunch of generic nic drivers. Some sort of ftp client (whatever is your favorite). There are tons of more stuff that you could argue to take, and you could probably take alot of it. And it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to make the whole damn thing bootable, and don't forget to load that generic oak cd driver. 50 mb is alot for a rescue disk....

On the linux side... First off, don't make a jack of all trades windows and linux disc. Make two seperate disks for two seperate OS's. And, before you go making a list of all the linux programs, check out tomsrbt. Although it was made with the 1.44mb limitation of regular floppys in mind, its a great starting point. And with the addition space you can add all the other goodies that he had to leave out due to the room.

I started with Slackware, moved to RedHat at version 4.1, tried to move to Debian when Hamm was released (gave up in frustration), and then moved to Debian sucessfully when Potato was released. I am definately happy with Debian. I still use Slackware for rare installations (I certainly use it more than I use RedHat).

Reasons I prefer Debian over Slackware for most systems:
* Fastest path from bare metal to rock-solid stable server
* Easier to maintain, particularly security updates
* Well thought out system configuration files and scripts
* Debian puts more development manhours into making sure the packages are debugged and working well together
* I prefer modular System V-style init scripts to Berkeley-style huge rc files
* Closer to LSB and FHS standards
* Lots of stuff (both good and fun) for my GNOME Woody desktop without a lot of work

I use Slackware instead of Debian for the following:
* Floppy-only machines that have little or no internet connectivity
* Excellent for fire-and-forget machines that will never get maintained
* UMSDOS installations (Remember UMSDOS? Slackware still supports it well)
* I need a quick root/boot disk combo for an obscure legacy system

The rest of the time, I use TomsRtBt :-)

Perhaps you could use one of those rescue boot floppies? Such as Tom's rootboot.

http://www.toms.net/rb/home.html

Consider using dd, grep, etc. on a Tom's Root/Boot disk.

-Peter

He doesn't have an existing Linux installation yet so he can't use cdrecord to make his bootable ISO9660 CD's. Are either Easy CD Creator or Nero for Windows capable of burning the bootable Linux iso images correctly?

The reason I'm concerned is that when Win98 scragged my laptop I got the ISO for tomsrtbt and tried to burn it with Toast on a Macintosh, and it wouldn't boot. Toast didn't seem to understand the ISO format tomsrtbt's image used.

Mike

And of course the inevitable 1-meg floppy. Not even big enough to back up the registry. Too small, in fact, for anything really useful. It's just there out of industrial inertia.

I'd disagree with that somewhat. It's a lot less of a hassle to turn a floppy into a boot disk than it is to burn a CD. And rescue floppies are anything but useless.

Since you are talking about the resgistry, I'm guessing you are a windows-only human (altho, I could be wrong). However, floppy utilities such as Tom's Root Boot are an invaluable resource for Linux users.

As a bit of an aside, I recently purchased a G4 for use in my music pursuits. It doesn't have a floppy. Which wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that the opcode drivers only ship on floppies, making it a bit of a hassle to load them onto the G4 (assuming I ever find the damn things in this appartment of mine).

Speaking of which, have you bought any Maxtor drives lately? They still ship their installation software only on floppies. Presumably this is because there are machines out there that have BIOSes that won't let you boot from CD.

So, altho I think that floppies are a hold-over from previous generations of technology, they do still serve a purpose. And will continue to do so for some time yet.

P.S Does anybody out there happen to have copies of the drivers and software for the Opcode Studio64X? Please, Please, Pretty Please? :)

Just off the top of my head, the already-mentioned Linux Router Project, the freesco project, Tom's (very cool) rtbt, etc. I use tomsrtbt all the time as an emergency rescue floppy, and I can only imagine all the cool stuff he could do with ~16-18 times more disk space (the level of functionality already acheived in 1.7Mb is amazing)...

Heck, imagine having a floppy-based install where you don't have to disk swap for more drivers to enable networking? Slackware might actually be able to use disk sets other than A and N again on floppies... (not that I hold that against them, trying to fit things like X onto floppies is just silly in a masochistic sense) And I don't think it'd be too long before somebody makes a ZipSlack analog for this new tech.

And all the ram-based/cdrom-based distros (i.e. ones that load into ram off a floppy like LRP or the demo linux projects) would have a cool new way to enable persistant storage of more than the smallest things (e.g. logging in HD-less LRP systems).

... but probably a III series. I started out using PDAs shortly after a friend in college got the Pilot 1000 (or was it the 5000?). Being a geek, and fairly trusting, he let me play with it for a while, and I picked up the basics of Graffiti in about 15 minutes.

By the time I saved up enough play money to get one, the PalmPilot Personal and Professional were out, so I picked up a PPPro. That was about 3 or 4 years ago. It really helped me keep track of assignments for classes, student government, etc.

It wasn't until I got to into the working world (and grad school part time), that I really started using it for anything "serious". I found using the Memo app for taking notes in meetings and classes, especially with liberal use of the built-in shortcuts.

I upgraded with the PalmIII expansion card when it came out (I was running out of space w/ just 1 meg of memory). It worked fairly flawlessly once I stopped downloading a lot of the "crap" applications that are out there. (Unfortunately, you can't really tell the cream from the crap except by using it, usually)

About a year ago or so, after my girlfriend of the time kept repeatedly sitting on it (I kept it in a special pilot pouch made by a place which disappeared a few years ago), it ended up dying a slow, painful death. Resets at random times, the screen would periodically get scores of vertical lines, graffiti input would get erratic, and I'd have to constantly realign the digitizer.

I spent a few months without a PDA of any kind, and being late for meetings @ work, missing appointments, etc. I finally broke down and ended up getting a PalmIIIc after I'd been admiring a coworker's for a couple months.

In order to protect it, I purchased a RhinoSkin titanium slider case to protect it. They add just a little to the dimensions of the IIIc, and very little weight. Plus, I no longer need to worry about someone sitting on it. I also ended up getting a RhinoPack 2000 to carry everything in. It's able to hold my IIIc in case, my cellphone, 3-5 3.5" floppies (like tomsrtbt, Debian rescue, etc).

The 8 megs in the IIIc (and IIIxe that others have recommended) is great, I haven't been able to fill it up yet. The color is fairly crisp. I really like the rechargable batteries and being able to charge from the cradle, since I was going through a pair of AAAs about every 2-3 weeks, and had to make a conscious effort to not leave my older PalmPilot in the cradle (there's a problem with them, where if you leave them in the cradle, the batteries drain...there's a few quick fixes out for that though, that involve modifying the cradle).

The other thing I like about Palms in general is that they use Flash ROMs, so it's fairly painless (if you have access to a Windows PC or a Mac) to upgrade the OS when Palm releases completely new ROM images. Apparently, Handspring doesn't have Flash ROMs in the Visor series, claiming that they'll just release springboard modules to upgrade the OS. That's great, except when you happen to want/need features in the new OS, but also want to use another springboard (pointed out by a coworker recently who bought one of the newer Visors).

Linux support (and unix in general, OS/2, etc) has been around for as long as I've owned Pilots/Palms, in the pilot-link package (usually available w/ most distros and on Palm software websites).

I'm still using the IIIc to basically organize my life, and take notes in meetings and classes still.
--

the new edition has simplified this and now covers two commercial UNIX systems (Solaris 2.7 and HP/UX 11.00) and two free operating systems

Red hat is a 400 million dollar company. That doesn't sound like a non-commerical entity to me. There's continual misunderstanding within and without Open Source community that being open or closed source is equivalent to being commercial or non-commercial. They have nothing to do with each other, whatsoever.

Some examples
Open Source, Commercial: Red Hat Linux
Open Source, Non-Commercial: Tomsrtbt
Closed Source, Commercial: Windows 2000
Closed Source, Non-Commercial: PowerArchiver

----

The kernel alone (when compiled), can take up anywhere from 700K to 1.2MB, depending on the configuration and whether drivers are compiled in.
Yea. You know that that is close to needing 2 floppies! shit. that's huge.

ps windows needs a whole CD and 50~100 megs of "service packs" to get it running right. I'm sure that windows 2010 will ship on a DVD.
And you'll STILL be able to boot a fully functional linux box off one (1) floppy disk.
-Superb0wl

2M... do you know how many single disk distros there truly are? my favorite is tomsrtbt but there are a bunch of others.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/{sda,hda}

which will wipe out the entire disk including the partition table (don't do this on a disc which contains anything useful!). It makes it possible to install NT4 on a disk larger than 8GB without hassle, and Redhat installers will partition the disc without any nasty questions when the disc is blank. It is also useful when you want to erase a disc "beyond any recognition", ie. when someone else is going to use it.

I have used tomsrtbt to format a disc with fat, copy a win95 cd into it, booted the machine in dos and started the installation. Why? I didn't have a dos driver for the f*ing CD drive connected to a Sound Blaster controller.

http://www.toms.net/rb/

YES !! I want tomsrtbt ++ on a credit card size cd now !!!!

Don't leave home without it.

One problem I had with the CD is that its size and shape makes it prone to "falling through the drive tray" when I use it in one of my SCSI CD-ROM drives. It's just small enough to slide through the slot in the back of the tray if the CD stops spinning at just the right position.

I've been carrying the CD around in my bookbag and using it on campus lab machines. When I need to ssh somewhere, I reboot the machine with the LinuxCare CD in it, run dhcpcd, run the ssh installation script (which pulls a .deb of ssh from a foreign server and installs it on the ramdrive), and ssh as usual.

As for availability, I doubt you'll find these things outside of computer shows. (Why not start a project to create a similar recovery CD?) As for its shape, look at www.shapecd.com for all the weird shapes you can have CDs cut. As for size, it's only slightly taller than a business card but not as wide.

Tomsrtbt fits on a floppy. :-)

----

There's a relatively old windowing system called W, which is more like GEM than X11. To call it minimal would be putting it mildly.
Check it out:
http://www.modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~puujalka/w1r2.html
http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/techfak/ags/ti /personen/itschere/w.html

The picoBSD distribution of FreeBSD manages to fit PPP, SSH, and W (with weyes, wclock, and a web browser called -don't laugh- wetscape) onto a single floppy.

If you're looking for the absolute maximum packed onto a single floppy, it's hard to beat tomsrtbt - Linux 2.0.36 and a whole heap of useful stuff, on a 1.7Mb floppy. It even has a floppy image (Memtest-86) included, so it's two diskettes in one! :-) No room for any windowing system though.

Does this floppy format really break certain floppy drives, and if so, how old do said drives need to be?

Do not be ashamed as an old kernel is quite in style these days. I have been experimenting with some of these older, smaller gems. They were the ones that ran on less hardware and still do it well. Since I have a few 386's, some with 4MB laying around, may I share the following:

Superant - sells cheapo CDs catering to small computers
Xdenu Versions
Linux On A Floppy
Etherboot home page

My favorite:
toms router boot home page

which would be found at http://www.toms.net/rb/.