ADIOS Project

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ADIOS Boot CD Installation Guide - Version 6

• Before you start
• ADIOS boot & run options
• Running Linux
• Configuration Recovery

Before you start

Although the boot CD will try to automatically detect your PC hardware, you may need to know the following:

• Do you have Microsoft Windows installed on a FAT filesystem and which partition of the Primary Master drive?  If you only have a NTFS filesystem then you may prefer to use the RAM disk, USB storage or floppy diskette options see below.
• If you are connecting to a network, what is your network interface configuration?  Do you know your IP address, netmask, default router, and DNS server or are you able to select a DHCP server?
• To enable X windows you may need the following information: Type of Mouse (eg PS/2), Type of Monitor (eg Generic SVGA), Amount of Video Memory (eg. 32MB), Clockchip settings (eg. None), Video Modes (eg 16 bit colour, screen resolution 1024x768).
• If you have Solaris installed then know what partition not to use as Linux swap

If your PC cannot boot from CDROM, then you could try making a bootable USB device.  Don't forget to change your BIOS to boot from the appropriate device.

ADIOS Boot & Run Options

There is a 10 second interval to enter a boot option.  Press one of the first four function keys for a description of boot options. If you want to run entirely in RAM just select 1 or a, if you want to configure ADIOS so that the next tiem you start ADIOS it remembers what you have set then choose the run menu option. If you have already configured ADIOS and just want it to start then hit enter and it will auto detect if any of its files exist on disk.

When the run menu options are displayed you can then choose from the following:

1 - run from CDROM and RAM disk - entirely in memory
2 - run from CDROM with /var loop on FAT/EXT3 disk file (64MB to 2GB)
4 - run from CDROM with /var loop filesystem on USB storage
7 - copy ADIOS ISO image onto disk (so that it runs faster)
9 - create a SWAP file on FAT/EXT3 disk file (64MB to 2GB)
11 - run from CDROM and RAM disk + save /var changes to floppy
x - remove X11 and hardware configuration for options 2, 11 and 22
i - information on Copyright, License and System
h - display help

The linux system will then start and the kudzu software, which will try to automatically configure the hardware.  The font server xfs must be running for X windows to run.  If X windows is unsuccessful, reboot and choose option "r" to change the run level to 3, which is a simple text mode. 

Once X windows starts you can login as user adios password 12qwaszx, although this is done automatically most of the time.  If you are in run level 3 you can also login as the root user with password 12qwaszx.  KDE and ICE display managers are installed on the ADIOS ISO image.  The KDE startup will take time to load.  Don't forget to change the root and adios passwords.  The ADIOS BootCD is a custom installation of Fedora Core 5.0 Linux running kernel 2.6.16.

• Network configuration - if you are not connected to a network which has DHCP, you can run netconfig command after you login to set the IP address, netmask, etc.
• Running system-config-display or X -configure from run level 3, will allow you to setup X windows.  When in doubt about which monitor to use, try a Generic entry such as a Generic Non-Interlaced SVGA or a Generic Laptop, enter amount of video ram (again your PC should probably have at least 4MB on the video adaptor).  Choose the "NO" option when you don't know.  Select video mode such as 1024x768 or 800x600 using 16 bit or 8 bit, this will depend on your video, (use tab to move to next field, and space key to select field, if you are in doubt check your MS windows configuration before you start).   Select the screen resolution before running X windows.  If you started in run level 3 and you have started xfs and successfully setup X you can test X windows with the command startx or you can start run level to 5 by entering "init 5".

Running Linux

Once your system is up and running you should check out your configuration, open an X terminal and try the following commands:

• lsmod - list of kernel loaded modules
• mount - list connected filesystems as read-only or read-write
• df - disk free will show /adios (cdrom), /var/tmp(ram).
• top - displays the top of the process table
• firefox - will start a web browser accessing your localhost web server, documentation can be found in the LDP guides, man, info and /usr/share/doc.
• uml - will start a virtual machine - see uml documentation online, if X is not running the uml machines are on <ALT><F8> to <ALT><F12>, the uml command connects the UML virtual machine to the parent ADIOS boot CD, thus uml1 at 192.168.201.1 is connected to parent at 192.168.201.252

  From inside the UML virtual machine try the following:

  • startx - will provide the uml machine with the IceWM desktop (not required if UML is in run level 5).
  • You can start the same services automatically each time on the UML virtual machines. On the parent machine in directory /etc/uml create a file rc.local, if your add the line "startx" then each virtual machine will start X windows, or you could change the virtual machine to start in run level 5.
  • You can start different services on each of the virtual machines by creating a separate file for each UML machine. In the directory /etc/uml on the parent create the rc file called rc.uml2 is executed for the second UML virtual machine.
  • The virtual machines has set the network interface MTU (maximum transfer unit) to 1484 bytes, You may also be required to run uml_fix on both the parent and each of the UML virtual machines, or you can run a command such as ifconfig eth1 mtu 1484 for eth1.
  • Edit the UML configuration file /etc/uml/uml.conf to use more or less memory per child UML virtual machine, to use real swap files, to choose how much swap space to use, to change the maximum number of virtual machines, to change the number of virtual networks, or change the security of the operating system.
  • Don't forget to run halt within the UML virtual machine to shut it down.

To shutdown your PC logout and then select shutdown.

Configuration Recovery

First run kudzu to setup your hardware configuration file /etc/sysconfig/hwconf.  If X windows did not start. You can then run system-config-display yourself to setup X windows, you may need to start the xfs font server, then you can start X windows with the command startx.  If you don't want to run xfs, edit the configuration file /etc/X11/xorg.conf, in the Section "Files", and replace the line:

FontPath "unix/:7100"

with the location of the font files, for example:

FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/Speedo"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/Type1"

There are several configuration tools available in /usr/sbin, such as netconfig - network configuration, for a list of these tools enter: 

ls /usr/sbin/*conf*

Inspect the directory /etc/init.d and /etc/xinet.d to see what services are available.  To restart a service such as networking enter the following:

service network restart

The filtering of network connections is configured in /etc/sysconfig/iptables.  To stop a service such as iptables enter the following:

service iptables stop

Warning: disabling the personal firewall rules exposes your system to network attacks.

Written by Neville Richter, n.richter@cqu.edu.au Copyright GNU Public Licence 2003-2006.