Re: [owl-users] Customizing Owl to fit in a small sized USB Stick or CF

On 3/28/12, gremlin_at_private <gremlin_at_private> wrote:
> On 28-Mar-2012 08:48:04 +0000, Zenny wrote:
>
>  > > > > > Gremlin had patches to add a new make target that would
>  > > > > > generate flash images instead of ISOs. I think those were
>  > > > > > primarily intended for installing systems from, and they
>  > > > > > were for larger flash devices (1 GB being considered the
>  > > > > > minimum anyone would likely happen to have handy anyway).
>  > > > > Great info. Do you mean this one:
>  > > > > ftp://ftp.gremlin.people.openwall.com/pub/linux/Owl/INSTALL/?
>  > > > Almost. IIRC, Gremlin also produced a patch to our Owl/build/
>  > > > tree to automatically generate flash images like that.
>  > > Not yet. There was only /etc/lilo-flash.conf file for booting
>  > > from a flash device.
>  > It would be awesome if you could create a wiki page about the way
>  > that you manage your compilation in flash. ;-) Appreciate that if
>  > you could manage to post a small documentation, subject to your
>  > convenience.
>
> I hope I'll find some time for that... For now, here's brief recipe:
>
> 0. Run `qemu -hda flash1gb.image -cdrom owl-install.iso -boot d`
> 1. Intall the system to one single root partition
> 2. Exit to shell instead of rebooting
> 3. Copy the /usr/src to /owl/usr/src
> 4. Create /owl/etc/lilo-flash.conf
> 5. Run `chroot /owl lilo -C /etc/lilo-flash.conf -b /dev/hda`
> 6. Shut down the Qemu VM
> 7. Run `dd bs=1M if=flash1gb.image of=/dev/sdX`
> 8. Try booting physical machine from freshly created flash drive
>
> I remember some issues with /etc/fstab when flash is recognized
> with different device name, so one single root partition and
> `mount / -o remount,rw` works that around.

Thanks for sharing extremely useful information.

In case if I want to create a barebone bootable Owl flash/usb stick
without any build tools, is there a list of the packages for such
minimal compilation somewhere for Owl?

Thanks!

>
>  > > > Owl already supports encryption for loopback devices, so
>  > > > you can use an encrypted ext4 filesystem with it currently
>  > > > (with our pre-built kernels and tools).
>  > > Yes, `losetup -e twofish -k 256 /dev/loop0 /dev/md0` works
>  > > just fine.
>  > Thanks for the hint ;-)
>
> That wasn't the hint - the hint is "don't forget to destroy the key
> when feds appear at your door" :-)
>
>
> --
> Alexey V. Vissarionov aka Gremlin from Kremlin
> <gremlin ПРИ gremlin ТЧК ru>
> GPG key ID: 0xEF3B1FA8, keyserver: hkp://subkeys.pgp.net
> GPG key fingerprint: 8832 FE9F A791 F796 8AC9 6E4E 909D AC45 EF3B 1FA8
>