TESTBED: MINI LINUXES
As Linux takes the embedded world by storm, Martin Howse evaluates the cost-benefit of OS
downsizing with a range of powerful, task-oriented, stripped-down Linuxes
embedding
DIY
solutions may seem to
be beyond the scope of
most ordinary people, calling for unusual
equipment and knowledge, not to speak of a
fine pair of tweezers and some serious
soldering skills.
Yet there is one quick and easy way into
embedding which is within the grasp of
most of us: the floppy disk. Legacy it may be,
but it’s the fastest way to turn that veteran
486 or classic Pentium into a finely tuned
router and firewall. Simply stick a stripped
down purpose-built Linux system on a
floppy, throw it into the drive and power up.
These micro Linux organisms have certainly
the image block for block to floppy. Of
course things can be made easier, and you
certainly don’t need to be running Linux
already; the commercial Coyote Linux
version offers a Windows wizard to write
the appropriate image and rawrite or
install scripts can also be used from a
Windows machine to construct the floppy.
It’s all about getting the right image – an
exact compressed copy of the working
system with the bootable bits in the right
place. These images can be downloaded
from the Web, configured online or from
your own machine. Once it’s been written
to floppy, pop it into the new would-be
router, watch it boot and unpack itself into
ramdisk. Now it’s ready to roll as a fully
functional system.
As for why it’s done, the advantages and
portability make mini Linux suitable in a
wide range of areas. We’ve mentioned
4 0 LinuxUser/October 2000
proliferated at an amazing rate over the last
few years – and there are some fairly strange
little beasts out there. For example, a
pharmacy student has created Linux In A
Pillbox, a set of floppies which aim to
address all areas and ailments in the
network environment.
A trawl through the Net should easily
bring up floppy images to suit almost any
situation. Mini Linux is an adaptive species –
which explains its popularity, exponential
growth and usability. The best bits of Linux
adapted to a specific purpose have been put
together by experts, ready for download and
often accompanied by good documentation
and excellent community support. This
router/firewalls as they probably account
for the most common use, particularly
when it comes to sharing an ISDN or other
line across a LAN in a small office. The cost
of a router is certainly unnecessary here,
when an old 486 can do the job equally well
and save on landfill. We’ll look at three
firewall/router solutions which are readily
available.
It’s one small step...
The portability of the humble floppy is also
an issue within another area, what we’ll call
the nomadic and rescue category. Think of
your floppy as an ultra-thin expendable
laptop or PDA. With the right image you
can work on any PC in the world using a
range of tools. If a Linux PC or network is in
trouble, select the right disk and you’ve got
plenty of troubleshooting utilities.
Most mini Linuxes won’t mess with the
makes for supreme ease of installation,
especially when compared to large
distributions. There’s no tricky hard-drive
partitioning, and custom configuration
utilities are concentrated on the task at
hand. Setting up a Linux on a floppy router,
for example, is quite rightly just like setting
up a router. Stability is also close to solid-
state router technology, with no drive to fail
and everything running from memory.
So how’s it done – and why?
The holy mantra within the mini Linux
world goes as follows: dd if=therouterimage
of=/dev/fd0. This may sound highly
esoteric, but on a Linux box this transfers
original OS or hardware, so they’re
excellent within educational setups. You
can use a floppy to learn all about Linux
safe in the knowledge that, whatever
changes you make to the configuration,
when you reboot you won’t have messed
up the system. And say you want to
implement a network of diskless
workstations. Of course, the neatest
solution is a bootrom (see Reviews, page
58), but if you want to test this approach,
why not write the Etherboot image to
floppy and see if it’s really what you’re after.
Although the size restriction is a key
factor here, what matters most is getting
the right Linux for the job. This size factor
does mean however that the whole area
makes for an excellent introduction and
development tool within the embedded
world. Maybe it’s not too difficult to set up
that matchbox-sized web server today.
Router/firewall
packages
Linux Router Project
With the motto “Embedding the bird for the sake of
humanity”, the LRP is probably one of the oldest and most
widespread Linux on a floppy. Favoured more by the
technically savvy and professional administrator, the
amount of material available online regarding the LRP is
enormous. This means that it’s very easy to find a disk
image closely configured to your situation, or to make one
online. This is the easiest way to go, but the beauty of the
LRP is the large amount of add-ons and modules available
for use by the more experienced. These include extras for
SSH, VPN, dhcpd, bindc, diald and httpd. A huge range of
network cards and other hardware is also supported on a
modular basis.
To create a demand-dial ppp disk to share a modem
across a LAN, we’ve used both the modular and straight-to-
disk approach. For such a simple router task, writing a disk
image is by far the easier option. Booting the would-be
router presents the usual kernel messages swiftly followed
by a decent array of configuration areas. Selecting the
relevant option brings up a text file for editing. Once you’re
happy with the setup and have tested the configuration,
you can re-write config files back to floppy and leave the
router to it. This is pretty much how all floppy-Linuxes
work, but LRP presents the ultimate in flexibility. Stability is
simply not an issue – our LRP box has been working happily
as a router for nearly six months.
Freesco
Short for free Cisco and aimed at being a budget
replacement for low-end routers, Freesco offers a simpler
approach than the LRP, emphasising ease of setup as a key
feature. Certainly, fewer options are presented, but it’s still
packed with features, including support for three Ethernet
cards and up to two modems – providing a useful way of
building a bridge, router or router/server. Here it’s simply a
question of downloading the latest zip file, expanding and
writing it to floppy. For simple situations this can certainly
prove easier than working through the sheer volume of
LRP material.
After booting and logging in to our new router we can
decide whether to go straight into configuration. The setup
utility encountered is certainly both comprehensive and
easy to use. There’s a wealth of options and the stripped-
down interface is very intuitive. You can even enable a
web-based interface to the router from other machines,
and with such features it’s obvious that a lot of work has
gone into this system to make it easy to use.
Coyote Linux
Designed primarily to provide internet connection sharing
for a network of computers, Coyote is available in a number
of versions, again emphasising ease of use. There’s both a
commercial Windows version featuring a wizard to aid
creation of the router floppy and a free Linux version
making use of a shell script for setup. However, both
versions we downloaded strangely seemed to have the ppp
option disabled. In the case of the Linux-based
configuration it was trivial to change this in the setup
script. The range of options presented was minimal but this
only reflects the one-purpose nature of Coyote.
Configuration through to booting the new router took less
than ten minutes, so the stripped-down angle obviously
pays off here.
Given that all these router/firewall projects run a release
of the Linux kernel there are few worries about
functionality or stability. Firewalling capabilities are built
into the kernel, but there are some mini-distributions
out there which do stress the firewalling side of things.
These include floppyfw and the Fireplug EDGE Router,
part of the Thinlinux project. Another interesting
mini-Linux within the net arena is LSD – Linux and Squid
on a Diskette – though of course you’ll need a hard drive
for the caching.
Nomadic
and rescue
micro-Linuxes
Tomsrtbt
The Saint Bernard of the mini-Linux world, tomsrtbt is
billed as “the most Linux on one floppy disk”. There’s
certainly a lot here, with popular tools, scripts, modules,
add-ons and even man pages crammed onto a specially
formatted standard floppy. There are no secrets to getting
this much onto a disk and the documentation included is
excellent.
Tomsrtbt is available for download as both a tarball and
DOS zip file. These unpack a raw disk image and floppy
creation scripts which take the pain out of extended floppy
formatting and data transfer. So given that we’re getting a
lot on our disk here, it’s very simple to set up. Just make
sure that your diskette is top notch. And you’ll certainly
want to hang on to it, with great features right from the
word go. There’s a choice of video modes for the four
consoles, good hardware detection and all your favourite
tools and utilities such as grep, awk, sed, gzip and hexedit.
Editors include elvis, vi and emacs with network connectivity
tools such as telnet, route, and snarf for remote file
transfer. In fact, it’s hard to work out what isn’t here, with
even PCMCIA support for laptops included. Tomsrtbt is a
true general purpose portable system, with its addictive
simplicity a breath of fresh air.
Trinux
Breaking the single floppy rule but still pretty tiny on two or
three disks, this is one of the more adapted micro-Linuxes,
with the emphasis very much on security and problem-
solving.
This little distro boots up with a host of network security
tools such as port scanners, sniffers and other packages
primarily for monitoring and mapping networks. There are
some pretty serious tools here, the idea being that
problems, say, with an NT box can be troubleshooted
efficiently without affecting the underlying OS. You can
also easily use Trinux to create a simple packet-filtering
LinuxUser/October 2000 4 1
TESTBED: MINI LINUXES

Going for the burn
Going thinner and leaner than
the floppy in an x86 box is
necessary within certain
working environments, but the
principles remain the same. We
still need to run a stripped-down
Linux purpose-built for the job
at hand, and the micro-Linuxes
surveyed here certainly fit the
bill. One of the more unusual
embedding projects out there
with a DIY slant is the
matchbox-sized web server,
part of the wearable computing
project at Stanford University. A
stripped-down Red Hat distro
runs from a 16Mb flash ROM on
a single-board 486.
The Pizza Box file server
from Kyzo (www.kyzo.com)
takes a similar approach to
embedding, again with Linux
running from flash ROM. Here
the emphasis is on Windows
connectivity, with Samba
included and a good-looking
custom web interface – all this
running from a thin-crust pizza
box. The software is
available for download as a
trial version and we’ll be
reviewing it in a future issue. pushes Linux onto some pretty
Although there are floppy- basic hardware.
based diskless workstation Other useful embedded
solutions out there, such as projects include uClinux, LEM
floppyX, it’s always going to be and Emblin, and if you’ve a few
neater in hardware. We look at ideas for that wearable MP3
an Etherboot-based bootROM player they’re certainly all
network card from the Linux worth a look.
Terminal Server Project in this
issue (see Reviews, page 58)
and it certainly works well.
There’s plenty of documenta-
tion out there to show you how
to do it yourself.
The floppy-based micro-
Linuxes make an excellent
introduction to embedding, and
if you want to go further it may
be worth looking at such
packages as ELKS which
Stanford’s matchbox-sized server

firewall with NAT and, yes,
there are even firewall testing tools included.
Kyzo’s Pizza Box
file server: hold
Creation of the two floppies was a touch more
the anchovies demanding than tomsrtbt, with resort to our old
friend dd. The FAQ covers this step by step and,
with rawrite instructions included, Windows
users are not left out in the cold. Trinux makes
use of the standard Syslinux bootloader on the
first disk, with the second as a data disk
installing network security tools or other useful
packages on the system.
Once we’re up and running, the network
configuration is entered. Our 3com card was not
recognised so it was necessary to go back and
load the relevant module onto the boot disk. This
isn’t difficult but may be too much for some. With
its powerful tools, Trinux is aimed more at the
advanced user, who will have no problems here.

Mini Linuxes round-up

Name Best For Medium Special Features Website

CClinux general 1 floppy recent kernel www.cosmicchaos.com/cclinux

Coyote router 1 floppy ease of set-up www.coyotelinux.com
DosLinux/LoopLinux Windows machines 1 floppy – www.tux.org/pub/people/
kentrobotti/looplinux/index.html
Dragon Linux Windows machines HD ease of use www.dragonlinux.org
ELKS old machines 1 floppy port of Linux to minimal hardware www.elks.ecs.soton.ac.uk
Emblin general embedded – www.master.cit.be/c27
Floppix education 2 floppies leaves HD well alone floppix.ccai.com
floppyfw router 1 floppy firewalling www.zelow.no/floppyfw
FloppyX workstation 2 floppies XFree xdenu.tcm.hut.fi
Freesco router 1 floppy ease of use www.freesco.org
Giotto development x floppies very modular www.quietsche-entchen.de
hal91 general 1 floppy one of the first home.sol.no/~okolaas/hal91.html
LEM embedded embedded XFree linux-embedded.com/lem.php3
LIAP general x floppies set of specialised ‘pills’ www.liap.eu.org
LOAF general 1 floppy – www.ecks.org/loaf
LRP router 1 floppy the most versatile firewalling www.linuxrouter.org
LSD caching server 1 floppy Squid caching software wwwcache.ja.net/dev/lsd/
mulinux general 1 floppy – sunsite.auc.dk/mulinux
PhatLinux Windows machines HD see Reviews, page 54 www.phatlinux.com
PizzaBox file and print server embedded Samba www.kyzo.com
Pocket Linux workstation 1 floppy ease of configuration pocket-linux.coven.vmh.net/index.html.en
tomsrtbt rescue 1 floppy packs it in www.toms.net
ThinLinux general embedded – www.fireplug.net/thinlinux.htm
Trinux troubleshooting 2/3 floppies security and special tools trinux.sourceforge.net
uClinux general embedded port to non-MMU processors www.uclinux.com
Zipslack Windows machines zipdisk slackware www.slackware.com/zipslack

4 2 LinuxUser/October 2000
TESTBED: MINI LINUXES

Other key websites The modular approach pays off in terms of
functionality, with additional packages easily
Diskless HOWTO installed on the data disk. Common commands
sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/Diskless-HOWTO.html are all there and the included network security
Etherboot tools are a real eye-opener. This is a great micro
etherboot.sourceforge.net Linux with big ambitions.
Matchbox web server
wearables.stanford.edu/hardware.html
Embedded resources LOAF
www.linux-embedded.com (Linux On A Floppy)
With its simple name, LOAF has to be one of the
easiest portable Linuxes to get into. Simply
choose the disk image which suits your network
card, write to floppy using rawrite on a Windows
box or dd under Linux, and that’s it. There’s still a
lot there, though, with four virtual consoles
available. It’s pretty much aimed at the beginner
and could be an easy way into Linux for the
student, with little or nothing to go horribly
wrong. LOAF also shows the way when it comes
to low-budget diskless clients with lynx, ftp,
telnet and ssh packed in.
In practice, LOAF was certainly one of the
fastest to get up and running, although choosing
an image to suit the network card does hamper
the complete portability somewhat. As a work-
station or education package LOAF feels good,
though. The lynx web browser defaults to a
useful help page and the filesystem is well laid
out and certainly simple. It is very functional but
the lack of some common tools means that even
the beginner would outgrow this little Linux
pretty quickly.
There are plenty more where these came from,
and others worth checking out include mulinux
and hal91, the grand-daddy of them all and an
inspiration to shrink Linux.

Zip it up and start again
The fact must be faced that there are still plenty of
people running some form of Windows on a desktop
machine. Many of them would be glad of the chance to
try out Linux, but when they read about
re-partitioning and backing up the whole system it’s
another story. Naturally enough, given the adaptive
nature of micro Linux, there are several little distros
for that niche.
We’ve already looked at Dragon Linux (see
Reviews, LinuxUser, May/June 2000), and we check
out PhatLinux this month (see Reviews, page 56). Of
course, all the floppy-based packages will run on a
Windows box and some, like Doslinux, are designed
specifically for this area. But what we’re looking at
here could be termed the zip-Linuxes – distributions
available as a single .zip file which install like any
Windows application. Or, like ZipSlack, a Linux which
can be installed or booted from a zip disk.
ZipSlack, which is a special edition of Slackware, is
both portable and adapted for use on Windows
machines. It packs a lot in and is very functional,
although it does use the UMSDOS filesystem, but for
the more demanding its larger brother BigSlack may
be the one to go for. This includes the majority of a full
Slackware install – including a preconfigured X Window
System setup and GNOME.
Another important zip-Linux is ZipSpeak, a talking
mini-distribution of Linux for blind and visually
impaired people, based on the latest ZipSlack. Ease of
installation is important here and this again will run
right from the zip file on a Windows or MS-DOS
machine.
ZipSpeak uses the Speakup screen reader, written
by Kirk Reiser and Andy Berdan, to provide speech
feedback under Linux. Speakup is built into the Linux
kernel itself. It has to be the ultimate adaptive micro-
Linux with a real-world use.

4 4 LinuxUser/October 2000