These instructions assume that you already have some knowledge of Bering and a working distribution running out of one or two floppies.

They have been tested with Bering v1.0-rc1 on several hardware configurations, using only IDE CD-ROM's. No SCSI support is planned at this stage.

Comments on this section should be addressed to its maintainer: Luis Correia <lfcorreia at users.sourceforge.net>.

First make sure you have your Bering floppy distro already working. You may want to take one or more of the following actions:

Make sure to read the CD-Rom section of Bering user's guide chapter on "Booting Bering from different boot-media".

From now on we are going to use a Windows machine to create the CD. Linux users should have no problem in following.

Download the two following packages, syslinux and cdrtools. Unpack them with WinZip. Also download the makeiso.bat MS-DOS bat file from the Bering "contrib" directory.

Create a new directory. It can be anywhere but in practice I recommend to create it next to the root (e.g. C:\) since it will be easier to access it at a later stage from the DOS prompt. Let's call it BCD ("Bering CD"). We will have the following directory hierarchy:

     C:\
      |
       --- C:\BCD
            |
             --- C:\BCD\diskcontent

Once this is done put in the C:\BCD directory the following 3 files:

Then put in the C:\BCD\diskcontent directory the following file:

If you are in a hurry, download the initrd.cdrom file from the Bering "contrib" directory and rename it initrd.lrp. This is an initrd.lrp "package" which includes the necessary kernel modules to access a CD-Rom at boot time. You can also create it yourself as follow:

Boot your working Bering floppy. In the /boot/lib/modules directory put the following modules that will allow boot time CD-Rom support (those modules can be found in the Bering modules download area):

cdrom.o
ide-mod.o
ide-cd.o
ide-probe-mod.o
isofs.o

Declare those names, without the ".o" suffix in the /boot/etc/modules file through the initrd package menu. The order MUST be respected.

Now backup the initrd.lrp package !

Copy all the files from your working Bering floppy to the C:\BCD\diskcontent directory (except initrd.lrp if you have not created it yourself as described above, in which case you will put in the C:\BCD dir the one you downloaded).

In this directory do the following:

After that your isolinux.cfg file will look like:

display syslinux.dpy
timeout 0
default linux initrd=initrd.lrp init=/linuxrc rw root=/dev/ram0 boot=/dev/cdrom:iso9660 PKGPATH=/dev/cdrom:iso9660,/dev/fd0:msdos
   LRP=root,etc,local,modules,iptables,ppp,pppoe,keyboard,shorwall,ulogd,dnscache,weblet,libz,routerst,sshd,tinydns,ipsec

Get access to MS-DOS from within Windows. Change your directory to C:\BCD. Then execute the makeiso command file. This file contains one single line with the following command:

mkisofs -o bering.iso -b isolinux.bin -c isolinux.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -hide isolinux.cat -hide isolinux.bin -l diskcontent

You should now have a bering.iso CD-Rom image in C:\BCD. You can now create your Bering CD from this ISO image with your favorite CD burner program.

Change your BIOS settings to declare your CD-Rom as the first boot device. You should be all set.

I read both the leaf-user and the leaf-devel lists. You may put your questions there.

Charles Steinkuehler for creating the *stein series,

Jacques Nilo & Eric Wolzak for the Bering series,

Allen Hillery for the hints & Christian Hostelet for beta testing,

all LEAF developpers,

my friend João Alves for his helpful linux support and

Mike Noyes for keeping up his excellent work on the LEAF site.