HowTo
How to put KioskCD onto a CF card, as told by Jack Raup:
I have managed to install and run this fine distro on a CF card. It boots like knoppix normally does as if it were booted from a CD, that is - read/write files are in ramdisk.. shutting off the power has no effect on the filesystem, because it's non-volatile RAM.
The end scenario is a diskless machine, with the CF card connected to the IDE bus via proper interface (a CF to IDE-40pin adapter, both of which cost next to nothing). I used a 256MB SanDisc "ultra fast" CF card.
This is not for beginners... so don't expect quick easy solution, unless you are a geek (like me).
Overview
- Partition/Format the card FAT16 LBA, bootable flag set.
- CF needs to have MBR and ldlinux.sys installed via syslinux
- Copy contents of KioskCD ISO to root directory of CF card
- Copy the contents (except ldlinux.sys) of /knoppix/boot.img to root directory of CF — do NOT replace the ldlinux.sys !! Keep the original that was placed there by syslinux so the tiny bootloader code can find it.
- Edit kioskcd.conf to your liking, set your BIOS to boot from the IDE/USB-HDDx and boot that puppy!
Notes.. Formatting your device is the hardest part....and if you can install the MBR with syslinux, it will work.
Syslinux only installs to disks with 512k blocksize or smaller than 16k clusters.. so the hardest part is formatting the CF to suit this.. do NOT use disk with more than 1024 cylinders. There are various format/make-boot utilities to do this for USB-sticks, for which this procedure will work, if you want to boot from USB-HDD. This is easier with the CF-card directly connected ON the IDE bus because your PC thinks there is a hard-drive there, not a flashdisk, and should format it properly. Also to note, syslinux is FAT12 or FAT16 ONLY - therefore, has a theoretical limit on disk size is about 1GB.. that's the entire disk and not just a partition.. would recommend something in the 128-256 range, here.
Basically, these utilities "tell" the flash device it CHS values, and some make it possible to płt the MBR in the proper place to act like a HDD. Beware, some memory devices simply refuse to take this format, leaving 1-meg blocks dosn't work.
Also if you have a linuxbox and a spare harddrive, it is possible to copy an image of a 128MB disc (bootable FAT16/LBA with MBR, partition(s), filesystem(s), and all) to a flash/usb mem device.. NOTE: BE CAREFUL with dd and which disks you are reading and writing, or you could wipe out your OS. Adjust this for your own devices:
dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdd
possibly requiring manually configure CHS valued in BIOS to boot the memdevice overriding the reported CHS.
If you have a linux-box, you can mount img/ISO files without writing a floppy or burning the CD. if your kernel allows (Mandrake 10 does)
mount -o loop /somepath/boot.img /mnt/somedir