I am trying to unzip rc.custom.gz from tomsrtbt so I can
give it a serial console. All you need do is modify /etc/inittab
and add a line defining one of the serial ports as a console
login.
Normally, this is trivial and one should just give the
command
gzip -d rc.custom.gz
and, assuming /etc/inittab becomes accessible, edit it and gzip
it back up and replace the old rc.custom.gz with the new one.
The problem is that in 2002, gzip apparently worked
differently so if you use modern gzip on it, it just complains
$ gzip -d rc.custom.gz
gzip: rc.custom.gz: not in gzip format
I tried tar zxf as some suggested in searches of
discussion lists so the problem is most likely related to
different libraries used back then compared with ones we have now.
For those who may not know, tomsrtbt is a clever bit of
obsolete technology that crams an incredible amount of Linux on
to a 1.7 MB floppy. That is actually a standard 1.4 MB floppy
which is formatted with the sectors squeezed more tightly
together, giving you 82 tracks and 21 sectors per track as well
as a warning that it could harm your floppy drive although most
just work fine without complaint.
Is there a reasonable way to uncompress this archive?
The documentation written with tomsrtbt contains a line
stating,
Of course, you have to uncompress rc.custom with gzip -d
to edit anything within, but the impression I get is that this
command worked back then.
He also mentioned all the tools on the disk worked
against libc5 so one probably needs a $LOAD_LIBRARY_PATH pointing
to a working version of that lib.
I got a serial console going on tomsrtbt by booting it
up, going in to /etc/inittab and adding a serial tty which
one must activate by kill -HUP 1. It worked but I would like to
make a disk that just starts that way.
Any good ideas are appreciated.
If I could find the right rock to turn over, I might find
a libc5 to wakeup what's already on the disk.
This is certainly not urgent but I feel like this is a
good training session if nothing else.
Most of the standard unix utilities like ls, mount cd and
a bunch more are there and work properly as nearly as I can tell.
Martin McCormick
