MINDI LINUX README 01/31/2002 Home page: http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/mindi/ Author: Hugo Rabson <hugo@firstlinux.net> Mindi creates boot/root disks based on your system. It uses your kernel, modules, tools and libraries. It no longer includes the Mondo disaster recovery scripts and tools unless you use Mondo to create the boot CD/disks. However, it does contain things like fdformat, fdisk, dd, afio, lilo and lots of other good stuff. If Mindi does not find your CD-ROM drive at boot-time, examine the log file /tmp/mondo-restore.log to see what is going on. If possible, send me a copy The cause of the problem is almost always your kernel. Please check Mindi's web page to see which filesystems and hardware types your kernel must support. As a last resort, copy the floppy disk images from the CD's /images directory to floppy disks and boot from the floppies. That should get you started. FREQUENLY ASKED QUESTIONS Q: My kernel doesn't work with Mindi. What do I do? A: Either recompile it or use Mindi's. To use Mindi's kernel, say 'n' when asked if you want to use your own kernel. I recommend you recompile your kernel to include ramdisk support, initrt, CD-ROM support, floppy disk support and loopfs support. Q: When I boot from my CD (or floppy), the computer takes ages to boot. How can I speed this up? A: Edit /usr/local/mindi/mindi; change the line that says LILO_OPTIONS=""; change it to say LILO_OPTIONS="-c"; that should fix the problem. Q: Mindi doesn't include foo (or bar, or whiskey, or soda), a great tool that I really want on the CD. How can I make sure it is added? A: Add it to /usr/local/mindi/deplist.txt and re-run mindi. Q: LILO gives weird errors when I am running Mindi. It says things like, "Cannot run LILO on mountpoint.. (blah blah..)" What do I do? A: Reinstall LILO, or upgrade to a newer version. Q: Mindi takes up too many floppy disks when I write the boot/data disks to floppies instead of using a CD. What do I do? A: Either use a CD or delete some files from /usr/local/mindi/deplist.txt... Q: At boot-time, my Mondo/Mindi CD says, "Error 0x32" (or 0x04, or...) A: Either your BIOS is ancient or LILO has a bug in it. Set LILO_OPTIONS="" by editing /usr/local/mindi; that should fix the problem. Q: Mindi says, '/dev/fd0u1722 not found' or something similar. Why is that? A: Your distro was designed by a moron. Please fire their ass. Q: Mindi says, 'Cannot find /tmp/dev.0' and aborts. What do I do? A: Type 'losetup /dev/loop0 -d'. If you get an error then e-mail your local Linux vendor or support group. Q: I get a message like, "Cannot mount rootfs. Kernel panic," when I boot from a Mindi CD or floppy. A: Your kernel is weird. Are you using Debian? If so, ask them why they insist on doing things differently from every other major distro out there. Oh, and use Mindi's failsafe kernel. :) Q: I added some filenames to deplist.txt; I re-ran Mindi; I boot from the resultant CD/floppies - or rather, I tried and failed to boot. What now? A: One by one, remove the files you added. By process of elimination you shall find the culprit. Report it to me. I shall deal with it myself. Muahahaha! Q: Why can't I run or even find mondo-restore on my Mindi floppies/CD? A: Because this isn't Mondo. Mondo uses Mindi but Mindi does not backup or restore your data. If you want to backup data then run mondo-archive. Q: For some reason, my SCSI stuff isn't detected when I first boot Mindi but the modules are available after booting has finished. What's with that? A: Try adding your SCSI modules - e.g. 'fdomain' or 'scsi_x142x' or whatever - to /usr/local/mindi/mindi's SCSI_MODS variable; re-run Mindi; hey presto. Q: When I run Mindi, it freezes when trying to figure out my local keyboard mapping. (Or, it just craps out, printing gibberish.) What do I do? A: Find the call to FindAndAddUserKeyboardMappingFile. It's around line 1260 or so. Comment it out. Q: At boot-time, I get lots of "out of memory" or "out of disk space" errors. How can I fix this? A: Edit /usr/local/mindi/mindi. Increase EXTRA_SPACE from 19000 to 25000. Q: When mindi is creating the disk images I get fatal errors. What is wrong A: Is there enough room on your hard drive. Minid needs at least 50MBytes to create the images and unpack files even though you are only creating files a few megabytes. Do you have a graphical boot screen on lilo? if so try commenting out the line that calls it in your lilo.conf file (something like message=/boot/message) or rename the file. If all else fails you could re-install lilo.
