Running Unix Entirely from CD?

Dasein asks: "I am working as a Tech Support Developer, and I had a wonderful idea a few months ago. After stumbling upon Trinux, I modified it so that I could run Linux on any PC with a floppy. By doing this, I was able to backup on our network valuable data on users' computers when their OS failed. This summer I wanted to develop a similar idea but this time with a CD. I was having trouble finding Linux/BSD distributions that could run solely off a CD, and I'm a bit scared to start one from scratch because I wouldn't know where to begin. Does anyone have any suggestions?" nik suggests: On the BSD front, there's the LiveCD project, which seems to do exactly what you want.

Comments

Tom's root boot -- not exactly a CD

[djn]

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.

Re:Tom's root boot -- not exactly a CD

[djn]

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.

superrescue and isolinux

[xFallenAngel]

I have a good link for a Linux System off CD...

check out superrescue

I guess using that as a base, it wouldn't be too hard to create a bsd system or other.

If you still want to create your own system from scratch, isolinux is helpful. It takes care of the booting. The only other thing you would have to manage is to mount a ramdisk for /var and maybe /etc (anything that needs rw).

have fun :)

choices

[LinuxGeek8]

There are several distro's that can run from cd.
There's Demolinux, which is quite nice. It comes with gnome and kde and so.
There's the Linuxcare cd, which is like 100 or 200 Mb in size I believe.
There's also the Suse live evaluation cd, which I have no experience with. Suse also offers custom firewalls running from cd.

Two linuxes...

[Mr.Ned]

Demolinux (http://www.demolinux.org/) runs Linux + KDE/GNOME off a CD. It can optionally write to the hard drive in what they call an "anchor file".

Devil-Linux (http://www.devil-linux.org/) is a distribution targeted at servers with a need for security. The /etc is a write-protected floppy disk, and all programs are loaded off CD-ROM.

I remember a Slashdot thread that I can't find about floppy-disk distros - some people chimed in about a Super-Rescue CD from kernel.org.

Previous Slashdot article

[skware]

There was a similar article several months ago with a run down on the various floppy / cd based systems. It is probably well worth your while to check out that previous thread. I've seen a couple of good CD based ones around, especially the ones arranged such that they fit on a business card sized CD-R and hence provide you with the ability of a nice in wallet rescue disk. Checkout linuxcare's offering

Knoppix

[Stillman]

This one blew me away.

Germans never cease to amaze me! :)

So go try knoppix now!

It's autodetection is incredible, you can save state/prefs to floppy between boots, and it's very VERY up-to-date.

Re:Slackware live disc

[Vinson Massif]

It's _fantastic_. Boots from cd to a fully live system. The supplied X setting work well. I've saved a few users data when NT decides it doesn't want to work.