JACAL_main Setup

  1. Put the jacal_main directory on an NFS server and then share the directory as per the exports file in other_configs/matthew_exports. Not all the files that we use on our network have been included. We have provided a file listing in the file jacal_main/file_list of all the files the way we use it at TU CSS.

  2. You will need to recreate the jacal_main/linuxroot directory with a modified but otherwise standard Linux file-system. I think ours is some sort of mangling of a Redhat 6.0 file-system. The only thing the distribution directory contains is the startup scripts (i.e. the /etc/ directory. You will probably have to change these for your distro of Linux. If you think of a way to make this step more general then let us know and we'll include that modification in the distro (note a trend yet?).

  3. You will need to create jacal_main/ntinstallroot. We created this directory by starting an NT installation and catching it right before NT begins conversion of the partition to NTFS. This saves a couple of reboots from just putting the install files from the CD out there but that would probably work too. If you don't catch NT before the NTFS conversion then you will probably need to provide DOS boot files to bootstrap the NT installer once JACAL reboots to NT. The files actually go in ntinstallroot/workingdir and then ntinstallroot/mkzip is called to create a zipped up archive for transfer called ntinst.tgz. Hopefully we will be able to skip at least one more reboot once Linux NTFS write solidifies :-).

    Here is a summary of the NT install process. The process is marked with "***" at the point where we grabbed the files to put into ntinstallroot/workingdir:

    1. [BOOT] Machine is booted to MSDOS

      \i386 directory from CD is on C:\

      setup.exe is run with the various parameters that make it happy

    2. NT install checks out system and move the files to another location on disk. I forget just where at the moment but it has $'s and ~'s in it I think. ;) [sarcasam] This is done for reliablity reasons. [/sarcasam]

    3. [REBOOT] NT decides to unpack the files that it just shoved to the other part of the disk.

    4. *** FILES GRABBED.... and placed in jacal_main/ntinstallroot/workingdir/

    5. [REBOOT] NTFS Conversion (If that's your thing...)

    6. [REBOOT] NT Install Actually Starts

    The second phase of the JACAL process continues from where the NT install left off:

    1. FILES DOWNLOADED (in tarball from jacal_main/ntinstallroot/ntinst.tgz)

    2. [BOOT] NTFS Conversion (If that's your thing...)

    3. [REBOOT] NT Install Actually Starts

  4. Add the stuff you need to ntpatchroot. Refer to the file list. I think the only thing that we really added was our network drivers but there may be some other stuff needed. Make notes about how you modify this directory and tells us about it. The other directories under jacal_main should be pretty much complete, but you will probably want to look through the contents of the other directories just to try and gain some understanding.