News - Project Update 09-01-2010

There will be a new beta (v09012010) release next few days, with the latest stable kernel 2.6.32.3. Just to clarify you, MiniTux project doesn't like modular kernels. In a near future the releases of MiniTux will have two versions: one with a kernel without modules and another one with modules.
It will be also released a USB version of Minitux beta v09012010. It will give a chance to test MiniTux on real environment with you own hardware.

Regards.
LuisPT

How to configure and use libata SATA / PATA drivers

Configure your kernel as follows:

CONFIG_ATA=y
CONFIG_ATA_PIIX=y
CONFIG_ATA_GENERIC=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SR=m

You find those in "Device / Serial ATA (prod) and Parallel ATA (experimental) drivers" and "Device Drivers / SCSI device support" in menuconfig.

You need CONFIG_ATA_PIIX for current Intel chipsets - I got the hint from Serge Belyshev out from a thread on the ck mailinglist. It is a labeled a bit misleading:

[ ] ServerWorks Frodo / Apple K2 SATA support

[*] Intel PIIX/ICH SATA support <--- there

[ ] Marvell SATA support (HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL)

 

The other PIIX related options are for older chipsets.

Above configuration should also work for SATA as well, ATA_PIIX does SATA and PATA.

You can and probably should disable the whole IDE driver subsystem ("ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support") when you switch from old IDE drivers to the new libata PATA drivers:

CONFIG_IDE=n

You need to change the bootloader configuration, rename all /dev/hd* to /dev/sd*.

At least upto kernel 2.6.20 you also need to add the kernel boot option atapi_enabled=1 to get out of the box working CD-ROM support. Otherwise you manually need to load the module sr_mod with modprobe sr_mod. This option will likely become the default in 2.6.21 or 2.6.22

Screenshots Minitux

Some screenshots (in virtualbox) of MiniTux (build 04.01.2010)

 

 

Welcome to the project

Hello World.

This is a project for building a minimal linux operating system from scratch. I'm not an IT professional, just an amateur that wants to fulfill the personal dream and conquest the purpose of learning and building an minimal Linux OS.

The current status of the project is BETA. There is already a full functional ISO file to test the current build of the project. The system boots really fast in VirtualBox :)

You can download the current build (04.01.2010) here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/kozjmmnfmtz/MiniTux_Base.iso

The ISO file is only 5,72 MB. Test it in VirtualBox.

I'm looking for a free web to host all the files (iso files, sources files, packages files, scripts files, etc). Please help.

The base system is not yet closed, since I'm including some additional and essential packages to him. At this stage, the base system includes the following packages:

- Linux Kernel 2.6.31.6 (config file | source linux kernel 2.6.31.6)

- busybox-1.15.2 (config file | source busybox 1.15.2)

- syslinux 3.83

- bash 4.0

- ncurses 5.7

- PT_pt keymap (obtained from dumpkey command in Ubuntu)

- blkid 2.6 (from util-linux-ng 2.16.0)

- mkntfs 2.0.0 (libntfs 10:0:0)

- fuse 2.7.4

- ntfs-3g-2009.4.4

This project is licensed under GNU General Public License V3.

I'm using two hosts machines to compile de sources (SLAX) and build the ISO files (Ubuntu Karmic). SLAX is perfect to compile the sources since it gives me very few (almost unexistent) compile errors. Ubuntu sucks for compiling, so I'm using it to build the ISO from a script file (to be released to public very soon).

Please help. You can also participate in this project.