Minimax Live CD

oz · 03-06-2006

Just thought some of you might want to try out this relatively new live-cd called Minimax. It's text only (no GUI), and is only 32MB in size, so it's a quick download. I've been playing around with it and have found it to be a nice little rescue disk:

http://www.kotek.net/minimax/

NEWS: 2006-03-06 relased new version and SDK

Minimax is a Linux distribution which completely fit to an initrd image, because of this it can boot in every situation, which you can imagine. It is ultra small (32 MB), but very power full. It contains 2.6 kernel with ALL modules and balanced set of console utils, no X server.

**josolanes** · 03-06-2006

Thanks a lot for the link!

i've been looking for a backup distro like that for a while now. I see that it's possible to install it to the boot partition...Do you have any idea how to do this?

I'm sure one of the steps is to copy it's vmlinuz to /boot/ (most likely renamed first) and copying one of its menu.lst entries into grub, but what else is required? The part that, for some reason, I can't figure out is where its root directory would be for example.

Thanks in advance for any help

and thank you very much for that link. I was searching for something like this a while ago (so I don't have to rely on the actualy live-cd's so much) but was unable to find it before (several months back). I'm glad to see something like this has popped up

oz · 03-07-2006

Originally Posted by josolanes

Do you have any idea how to do this?

You are most welcome for the link, josolanes. No, not really sure how to go about installing it to the /boot partition. I'd be interested in that myself. I've asked that a documentation section be added to the minimax forums, but no reply from the admin as yet.

I've been experimenting with minimax as an emergency disk and rescue cd, and so far have found it really easy to work with.

ozar

**ImNeat** · 03-07-2006

Looks tight.

I love messing around with LiveCDs and also enjoy practicing command line [switched from gnome to flux so I was forced to command line more often]
This will be great practice. Appreciate the link.

**josolanes** · 03-08-2006

I figured out how to get it to run from the /boot partition

I did all of this soon after making my post, but quickly became busy with school work and was unable to test it (restart and take the time to actually boot into it) before, but just did now and it booted up just fine

What I did to "install" minimax inside the /boot partition and make it bootable from the bootloader (in my case...lilo, but I'll try to alter the instructions for grub as well):
1. download the iso
2. open a terminal and become root, as you'll need to have root permissions to do many of the following steps

Code:

su
[enter root password and press enter]

3. mount the iso to a mount point

Code:

mount -t iso9660 /dir/to/minimax.iso /mnt/cdrom -o loop

4. verify that it mounted properly

Code:

cd /mnt/cdrom
ls

if you see boot than it is mounted properly
5. change directories into the boot directory

Code:

cd boot

6. copy initrd and vmlinuz out of the cd, but not to your /boot partition...i'd recommend copying it to your /home/user directory temporarily

Code:

cp initrd /home/user
cp vmlinuz /home/user

7. change directories to the directory you copied "initrd" and "vmlinuz" to

Code:

cd /home/user

8. now rename the files so that you can more easily recognize them as the minimax files

Code:

mv initrd initrd-minimax
mv vmlinuz vmlinuz-minimax

If you use the grub bootloader, do the following to add minimax to your bootloader:
9a. Use your favorite text editor to open /boot/grub/grub.conf
(i use the text editor nano in my example)

Code:

nano /boot/grub/grub.conf

10a. You should now see your grub.conf configuration file with your various bootloader entries. Add the following to the end of the file

Code:

title=minimax
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk=31000
	    vga=(I'LL EXPLAIN WHAT TO PUT HERE SOON!!!)
        initrd /boot/initrd

the vga setting is used to boot minimax with various resolutions....
1280x1024 = "vga=794"
1024x768 = "vga=791"
800x600 = "vga=788"
640x480 = "vga=785"

11a. Exit and save your grub.conf with your new minimax entry
(using nano, do this....CTRL+X , then "Y" to save and exit)

If you use the lilo bootloader, do the following to add minimax to your bootloader:
9b. Use your favorite text editor to open /etc/lilo.conf
(i use the text editor nano in my example)

Code:

nano /etc/lilo.conf

10b. You should now see your lilo.conf configuration file with your various bootloader entries. Add the following to the end of the file

Code:

image=/boot/vmlinuz-minimax
	label=minimax
	root=/dev/ram0
	ramdisk=31000
	vga=(I'LL EXPLAIN WHAT TO PUT HERE SOON!!!)
initrd=/boot/initrd-minimax
	read-only

the vga setting is used to boot minimax with various resolutions....
1280x1024 = "vga=794"
1024x768 = "vga=791"
800x600 = "vga=788"
640x480 = "vga=785"

11b. Exit and save your lilo.conf with your new minimax entry
(using nano, do this....CTRL+X , then "Y" to save and exit)
12b. now do this

Code:

lilo

to update lilo and make sure your /etc/lilo.conf looks ok

Now reboot your computer, select minimax and you should boot into your minimax distro
The one error I did come across is that it said / is not a valid block device, but all of the programs still worked (such as Midnight Commander, fdisk, and cfdisk). If someone can let me know if there is a solution for this (or even if this is a real problem) than please let me know so I can update this mini-tutorial
Hope this helps someone interested in Minimax

**oosterhouse** · 03-08-2006

I just tried this and the only thing missing is an irc client. Other than that, it's pretty cool and a good rescue disk.

oz · 03-08-2006

Originally Posted by oosterhouse

I just tried this and the only thing missing is an irc client. Other than that, it's pretty cool and a good rescue disk.

It has one and did come with irssi but that was changed to epic5.

From the change log:

irssi replaced with epic5 because of size

**oosterhouse** · 03-08-2006

Oh I didn't see that, thanks.

**j-unplugged** · 05-05-2006

cool, i got minimax up from livecd and net is up and actually browsing from cmd line but i can't get images yet, and can't find info on it yet....

**j-unplugged** · 05-06-2006

btw, i was browsing w/ links but no images - there's a screen shot on the site of a browser w/ images - - anyone know if that's a diff browser?

Elinks doesn't seem to be included...i'm too new to this one. i tried a diff vid mode, maybe a setup/conf file? menu didn't help in the meantime, off to some reading...

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