I am currently trying to create a bootable USB key that I can use to boot a couple different X86 single slot processors. Creating a basic key is as easy as can be but I am looking to customize this boot image to meet two important criteria:
The system must boot in text only mode as my only interface with the hardware is RS232.
I want to add a software package called Passmark to the image so that once it is booted I can run a diagnostic of the board I have booted up.
If anyone has experience creating something like that I would really appreciate some advice. I am not partial to a particular distribution of Linux, just so long as my criteria above are met.
It looks like you need to create a bootcd that can boot to a basic os
like pcdos in order to run utilities.
I would try BartPE or ultimate boot cd first.
Unfortunately the DOS and BART utilities won't help me as I need to run within a Linux OS in order to run the software I am looking to run. As of right now I have Fedora 9 booting from a USB key, in text only mode, with my software installed. My main problem is that the OS is not sending the text output to the serial port.
After looking at some documentation online it seemed that editing grub.conf was going to be my answer but this isn't the case in Fedora 9 apparently. All of the RHEL 4 and RHEL 5 systems I have used utilize this file, however Fedora 9 apparently doesn't. I then went to inittab where I was able to change the default run level to 3. This unfortunately only applies to the video output.
I now need to know what is the best way under Fedora 9 to redirect all screen output to the serial port. Some things I have read are indicating that I would have to use a kernel command which basically means recompiling. If this is the case I suppose I am okay with it but it will be my first time recompiling a kernel.