= Project "Rrq's Tiniest Devuan Excalibur OS"

This project contains a script, `mkit.sh`, that based on Devuan's
excalibur repository builds a tiny (32 Mb) bootable disk image,
`bootimage.raw`, with just a Linux kernel and initrd to offer a
minimal command line shell.

That "**Rrq's Tiniest Devuan Excalibur OS**" is intended to be a start
point for someone with technical interest in the very first boot
stages, as well as for someone who wish to set up their own OS/Desktop
distribution without carrying much or any excess software.

The way to get it tiny is of course to rely on busybox-static which is
a single binary that caters for a large range of "standard" commands
depending on which (command) name it is invoked as. Other than using
that, it is then a matter of only including the most important kernel
modules.

This project also contains a few other scripts, in particular `vm.sh`
for running a Qemu virtual machine to trial either `bootimage.raw` in
its alternative bios use cases, and `packiso.sh` which prepares a
bootable hybrid ISO with `bootimage.raw` and more.

The interested developer/explorer would start by investigating, and
probably tuning, the steps of the `mkit.sh` script so as to compose
their own special disk image. As is, the script prepared a disk image
that includes boot equipments both for legacy bios boot and for UEFI
bios boot. Both of the boot equipments are deployments of syslinux
boot software that arekept together in the first disk image partition
with an EFI/FAT file system. The disk image also has a empty `ext4`
partition that may be extended to becomve a larger, second stage root
file system.

The script +packiso.sh+ runs xorriso to prepare a bootable ISO with the boot
image as an alternative, El Torito boot option.

.List of program/packages used by mkit.sh, vm.sh and packiso.sh
[caption=""]
====
* ar from binutils
* cat, chmod, cp, ln and rm from coreutils
* depmod from kmod fakeroot from fakeroot
* find from findutils
* gawk (as awk) from gawk
* mcopy, mkdir and mmd from mtools
* mke2fs from e2fsprogs
* mkfs.fat from dosfstools
* qemu-system-x86_64 from qemu-system-x86
* sed from sed
* sfdisk from fdisk
* syslinux from syslinux
* tar from tar
* wget from wget
* xorriso from xorriso
* xzcat from xz-utils
====

'''

.How to build `bootimage.raw`
----
$ ./mkit.sh
----
Note that it uses +http_proxy+ if that is set.

.How to package bootimage.raw into tiniest.iso
----
$ ./packiso.sh
----

.How to test 
----
$ ./vm.sh
----