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This document describes how to use the BICK version 0.8.0 tool to build
your own custom bootable CD to run Linux on Intel PC and/or Sun Sparc.

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Downloading

You can download BICK version 0.8.0 from:

    http://phil.ipal.org/freeware/bick/bick-0.8.0.tar.gz

Be sure to check for newer versions.

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Installation

Installation of BICK is simply extracting the tarball into a convenient
directory wherever desired.  You do need to be root to extract and set
up BICK.  You also need to be root to construct an ISO image using BICK.
The reason for this that many of the steps involve manipulating metadata
for files, and mounting filesystems, which only root is allowed to do.
You will have to examine all the files to be sure it is safe for you to
run these commands as root.

BICK is designed so that you can have multiple different project areas
to work on different variations of file trees intended for bootable CDs.
Each bootable CD project will be in its own directory.  However, you do
not need to extract BICK in each area.

Extracting the BICK tarball creates these subdirectories:
    bick-0.8.0
    cdinit-0.8.0
    silo-1.2.2
    syslinux-1.62

If you are building CDs only for Intel PC, you can remove "silo-1.2.2".
If you are building CDs only for Sun Sparc, you can remove "syslinux-1.62".

Everything you need to build the demo rescue CD for both Intel PC and
Sun Sparc is included pre-compiled.  You do NOT need a Sun Sparc computer
to build it on an Intel PC.  Source is included in case you wish to do
any changes and recompile.  The parts for the different platform will
need to be compiled on the platform or with a cross compiler.

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Project Setup

You can create multiple projects in different directories in order to keep
the particulars of different CDs separate.  The basic steps to set up a new
projects are as follows.  These instructions assume you extracted the BICK
tarball within the /home/root directory.

1.

Create a symlink called "bick" which points to the directory which is the
"bick-0.8.0" directory wherever you extracted it.  This can be a relative
or absolute path symlink.  Your command might be like:

    ln -s /home/root/bick-0.8.0 bick

2.

Complete the project directory setup with this command:

    bick/cmd/setup

3.

Add kernels with the following names, depending on which platforms you want
to build for.  For sparc kernels, usually one kernel does what you need, so
it can be stored as one file and the following be made as symlinks:

    kernel-intel32
    kernel-sparc32-sun4
    kernel-sparc32-sun4c
    kernel-sparc32-sun4dm
    kernel-sparc32-sun4u

Or you can extract the pre-built demo kernels as follows:

    gunzip < bick/bick-0.8.0-kernel.tar.gz | tar xpvf -

4.

Set up your file trees.  A separate tree is needed for Intel and Sparc if
you are making one CD for both platforms.  That is because the binary code
is different for each.  The following directory names are where the file
trees are to be found:

    root-intel32
    root-sparc32

Or you can extract the pre-built file trees which are a small set of files
based on Slackware 8.0 (for Intel) and Splack 8.0 (for Sparc) which make a
sample rescue CD.

    gunzip < bick/bick-0.8.0-rescue.tar.gz | tar xpvf -

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Building an ISO

Once you have your Linux kernels and file trees set up, you can proceed
to build an actual ISO file.

You need to decide if you want to have the /usr and/or /opt directories
loaded into RAM (tmpfs) at boot time, or if you want to leave them on
the CDROM and mounted there.  If you choose to load them into RAM, it
requires more RAM memory (the included rescue CD demo requires 64 MB).
If you choose to leave them on the CDROM, then you cannot remove the
CDROM from the drive while that system is running.

To build a CD ISO image which loads everything into RAM at boot time:

    cmd/buildiso

To build a CD ISO image that leaves /usr on the CDROM:

    cmd/buildiso -cdusr

To build a CD ISO image that leaves both /usr and /opt on the CDROM:

    cmd/buildiso -cdusr -cdopt

The buildiso script produces a LOT of output which describes the steps
it is performing to produce the ISO image file.

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Recording the CDROM

This step is done like any other ISO image.  If your recordable CDR or
CDRW drive is on Linux, you might run the command:

    cdrecord -v -data -pad name.iso

If your recordable CDR or CDRW drive is on another computer, you will
need to transfer the ISO image file to there and use whatever means you
normally record CDs with.

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