This is Darkstar Resque Disk v.2.3.99-pre9-A
   Copyright (C) Oct 2000 PhysTech Inc http://www.phystech.com

For installation instructions refer to INSTALL file.

INTRODUCTION
Darkstar Resque Disk is intended to allow commonly configured PC
to boot into minimal Linux system with enough capabilities to
repair an existing Linux hard disk installation or to
install from a variety of media including network.
This Resque Disk allows you to do the following:
  1. load additional kernel modules for 2.3.99-pre9 kernel
  2. partition your IDE/ATA or SCSI drives with fdisk
  3. create ext2 filesystems with mke2fs
  4. mount ext2 and iso9660 filesystems
  5. edit, copy, move, and delete files on mounted filesystems
  6. perform ext2 filesystems repair with e2fsck 
  7. configure your Ethernet interface(s)
  8. ftp files from FTP server on the network
  9. format floppy disks
  10.include additional programs and utilites
     
SUPPORTED HARDWARE
This Resque Disk standalone comes with the support for
the following hardware devices:
  1. ATA/(E)IDE and ATAPI cdrom drives and hard disks
  2. AIC7xxx based Adaptec SCSI controllers
  3. SCSI cdrom drives
  4. ISO9660 (cdrom) filesystem
  5. Intel EtherExpress Pro/100+ and compatible network adapters
  6. 3COM 3c59x EtherLink and compatible network adapters
  7. NE2000 series ISA network adapters
  8. Standard 1.44M floppy disk drives
  9. ext2 filesystem

TOOLS AND UTILITIES
This Resque Disk standalone comes with the following
tools and utilies:
  1. edit (e3 editor). Type 'edit' for quick online help.
  2. fdisk. Use 'fdisk /dev/hda' to view/add/delete partitions
     on first IDE hard drive. Similarly use 'fdisk /dev/sda'
     to view/add/delete partition on first SCSI hard drive.
  3. e2fsck. Type 'e2fsck -h' for quick online help.
     Use 'e2fsck /dev/hda1' to check and repair ext2 filesystem
     on first partition of first IDE hard drive. Similarly
     use e.g. 'e2fsck /dev/sdb3' to check and repair ext2
     filesystem on third partition of second SCSI drive.
  4. mke2fs. Type 'mke2fs -h' for quick online help.
     Use e.g. 'mke2fs -m 2 /dev/sdb1' to create ext2 filesystem
     on the first partition of second SCSI drive reserving
     2 percent of disk space for superuser.
  5. mkswap. Type 'mkswap -h' for quick online help. This command
     creates Linux swap space on a disk partition. Example:
     'mkswap /dev/sda3' will create swap space on third partition
     of first SCSI disk. Please note that before you create swap
     space the corresponding disk partition must be tagged as 'Linux swap'
     using 'fdisk'.
  6. mkdir, mknod, ln - these commands create directories, special
     device files, and symbolic and hard links. Use 'chmod' command to
     change permissions on files.
  7. mount/umount. Use these command to mount/umount supported
     filesystems. You may have to create mount point first before using
     mount command. Example:
     mkdir /mnt
     mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /mnt
     creates /mnt mount point and then mounts ext2 filesystem on first
     partition of first SCSI drive as /mnt.
     To mount first SCSI cdrom drive do
     mkdir /mnt
     mount -t iso9660 /dev/sr0 /mnt
  8. ifconfig,route. Use these commands to configure network interfaces.
     Usually, if your network card has been correctly detected
     all you need to do is to type
     'ifconfig eth0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx'  where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP
     address you want to assign to eth0 interface.
     If you want to access a server on remote network you will
     have to set up a route to that network using 'route' command. 
     Example:  route add -net 0.0.0.0 gw xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
     where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the gateway IP address
  9. ftp. After you assigned IP address to the network interface using
     'ifconfig' command (see item 8 above), you can use 'ftp' command to
     ftp files from FTP servers. Please note that you have to use IP
     addresses, not hostnames when running 'ftp' with this Resque Disk
     since no name resolution capabilities are included here
     due to the disk space limitation.
  10.insmod/modprobe/rmmod/lsmod - use these commands to handle
     additional modules. Normally Resque Disk upon boot tries to
     load all included modules. If you however want to load some
     additional modules from another disk, you can use insmod utility.
     Please be aware that the modules must be compiled for kernel
     version 2.3.99-pre9. Another case when you might want to use
     insmod command is to load module(s) with some additional
     parameters. Example of loading aic7xxx SCSI driver with
     additional parameters:
     insmod aic7xxx aic7xxx='verbose.irq_trigger:1.extended'
     Most typical cases when one may need to use additional parameters
     for modules is with network card drivers.
     One can supply explicit IO addresses and IRQ numbers for the
     driver to probe at to make sure the network card is detected
     correctly. Example for e.g. NE2000 driver:
     insmod ne.o io='0x300,0x280' irq=0
  11.lilo Linux loader is supplied along with sample config file and
     boot record file /etc/boot.b to repair linux setups using Resque Disk.
     You have to edit config file before running lilo to customize for
     your particular setup. For quick help on using lilo type 'lilo --help'.
     For complete documentation on Lilo and other Linux utilites visit
     http://www.linuxdoc.org
  12.fdformat. This program formats floppy diskettes. Use the following
     examples to format floppy diskette for 1.44M and 1.72M:
     fdformat /dev/fd0H1440
     fdformat /dev/fd0H1722
NOTE
  You may need to mount floppy (ext2), cdrom (iso9660), or hard disk (ext2)
  filesystems to load additional device drivers or use other programs not
  included in this Resque Disk.

The latest versions of Darkstar Resque Disk are
available from http://www.phystech.com/download/

Please send your comments about this Resque Disk
to author: sv@phystech.com