Well this is just for fun.
As I've documented previously, the build_weedog_initrd-latest.sh script produces an initrd that is distro independent. You just need a suitable root filesystem in a directory of its own (renamed to firstrib_rootfs/), make sure there is a kernel and associated modules inside that (if ubuntu or debian then kernel needs named vmlinuz-whatever_modules_version_number to align with the name of the modules in /usr/lib/modules). The build script will chuck out the vmlinuz-xxxxx and create a WeeDogLinux initrd.gz to match (which provides all the usual WDL overlayfs facilities (upper_changes and so on).
I've earlier posted a version of Slackware booted in frugal install after taking original Slackware root filesystem and processing it with build_weedog_initrd script as above in previous reports. Today, since I've been working on bug fixing along with fredx181 on rockedge's WDL_Void32 for Fred's HP Compaq I thought I'd make a WDL DebianDog of some sort. I had BionicDog64 on this system so made a WDL_BionicDog64 using above basic method first. That worked, and booted fine using WeeDog initrd.gz (and thus overlayfs) but for some reason X wouldn't start (I presume I didn't have correct xf86 server installed for my laptop graphics card (I'm sure I've come across that before...). Anyway, didn't have network connection to install any such driver so opted to do same with XenialDog64 system I also had on this machine. Well that worked too - and I'm actually posting from it now via wifi (the XenialDog64-provided wifi connection app worked fine). XenialDog apt/Synaptics also working fine as would be expected. Of course, the grub menu.lst isn't using Porteus Boot (it's using WDL boot) so looks like any other WeeDog menu.lst stanza:
Code: Select all
title WDL_XenialDog64 UUID method (on my system ata-interfaced SSD harddrive)
find --set-root uuid () b49b6ce1-8c76-4aca-be99-5fc57039c6a9
kernel /WDL_XenialDog64/vmlinuz w_bootfrom=UUID=b49b6ce1-8c76-4aca-be99-5fc57039c6a9=/WDL_XenialDog64
initrd /WDL_XenialDog64/initrd.gzEverything seems to work fine (except for the likes of SFS Load GUI (since that is designed for aufs system - and no aufs here at all). All the Puppy stuff also working just as in normal XenialDog (pup volume monitor and so on, one-click opening sfs file/isos per usual XenialDog fine - bound too really cos its XenialDog root filesystem after all!).
No point to this really of course since standard XenialDog64 works perfectly fine, but just a demo of how easy it is to make frugally installable distros (even for distros that are normally found as a full install) via WeeDog's build_weedog_initramfs-latest.sh script (though if I was really wanting that to build DebianDogs I'd add a few extra lines of code, about 5, so I didn't need to manually copy kernel across to the firstrib_rootfs/). By the way, I created the firstrib_rootfs/ simply by using unsquashfs on XenialDog's 01-filesystem.squashfs file, and copied that into the empty directory WDL_XenialDog64 along with build_weedog_initram-latest.sh script.
Anyway, was super quick way to build a WeeDog initrd controlled Ubuntu system. I've actually been planning to build a Ubuntu variant of my existing WDL_Arch64 desktop distro from scratch using build_firstrib_rootfs script and was doing so, but summer garden work got in the way - I'll get back to that when autumn arrives here. Of course recent DebianDog for Ubuntu would do instead but my partner likes WDL_Arch64 so if I want her to use Ubuntu she wants it like a clone of that Arch-based creation (which pretty much just needs me to slightly modify the existing f_00_Arch_amd64-openboxFull.plug that I use to build WDL_Arch64, so quite a trivial task actually.
As you can see, WeeDogLinux is quite a wee frugal Linux system build lego kit once you've got the hang of using its build scripts. Of course, you don't need to go the full root filesystem build way, instead it can be used to build tiny system's using just busybox and the likes of Void Linux standalone package manager (that's how WeeDogLinux in fact first started) and then add to that using firstrib plugin system (as rockedge does).
Not quite so easy to build a WDL_PuppyLinux since Puppy is designed around an initrd that is tied in very tightly to Puppy config files (unlike the distro-agnostic WeeDogLinux initrd). However, I think I can make a WDL_Puppy very easily in similar manner simply by first creating a single root filesystem of Puppy (rather than lots of sfs files like adrv, fdrv and so on, or get it from a live running Pup) and then running build_weedog_initrd-latest.sh on that. I may give that a go too, but not just now - I really need to get back to my jungle of a garden now...
EDIT: Actually, I couldn't resist, and in ten minutes successfully created WDL_BionicPup32 (keeping original adrv, fdrv, zdrv, and renamed pup_xxx.sfs), as described in more detail in the following two links:
viewtopic.php?p=12944#p12944
viewtopic.php?p=12946#p12946
Seasons Greetings, wiak