Independent GNU/Linux distribution made following the Linux From Scratch 9.1 book.
WARNING: This distribution was compiled for a specific hardware, and may not function properly in any computer. In fact, it's unlikely that Sklinux will run error-free in real hardware. It's advised to install it in a Virtual Machine.
Tested Specs: 8th gen Intel Core i3 CPU, 4GB of RAM. Also, it's recommended 2GB of free disk space. It may run in computers with similar specifications, although a 64-bit architechture is mandatory!
It's also mandatory that the machine has internet access or at least a copy of Sklinux tarball. If using a Virtual Machine, give it 2 cores and keep in mind Sklinux has no built-in DHCP client, so it's recommended a bridged network connection.
Sklinux can only be ran as is in Legacy Mode. If your system uses UEFI, it's still possible to run sklinux, but a custom Linux kernel must be compiled with support for UEFI.
There's no live image of Sklinux, therefore a host distribution is needed to configure the pre-compiled system. Basically any linux distro live image is good enough, but here are the needed programs/tools anyway:
- fdisk/cfdisk/parted or similar
- chroot (Unix default tool)
- mkfs.ext4 formatting tool
- tar archive manager
- terminal emulator or tty access
So, with your favorite linux live image booted and your terminal opened, let's begin.
Start by downloading Sklinux Tarball (343MB). This can be done through a web browser or with gdown (which can be installed with pip). The tarball includes a basic system with CA, wget, cURL, git and the Links Web Browser pre-installed.
From now on, it's recommended to run all the commands with root access (permanent or temporary with sudo or doas), otherwise some of them might not work properly, if at all.
Run lsblk to see the name of the available disk, where Sklinux will be installed (e.g. sda).
Now, you must create a Linux type, bootable partition. Below are the instructions to do this with fdisk.
IMPORTANT: all the examples consider the available disk as being sda. Use the appropriate name for your situation.
In your terminal, run fdisk /dev/sda. Create a partition with n, format it as primary with p and then press Enter three times. Use a to make the partition bootable and w to write everything.
Having that done, lsblk to see the newly created partition (from now on, the examples will use sda1).
Format this partition with mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1 (switching sda1 with your created partition).
The following commands create an environment variable, a folder and mount the partition:
export SKL=/mnt/sklinux
mkdir -pv $SKL
mount -vt ext4 /dev/sda1 $SKL
cd $SKLNow, untar Sklinux tarball. Supposing it was downloaded inside ~/Downloads, you'd do:
tar -xzpvf ~/Downloads/sklinux.tar.gzBy untarring all the files, you literally installed Sklinux, congratulations!
But it won't boot yet. There are some configurations that must be done, and a nice way to do it is by entering Sklinux temporarily from within the running live image.
First, there are more items to be mounted, so:
mount -v --bind /dev $SKL/dev
mount -vt devpts devpts $SKL/dev/pts -o gid=5,mode=620
mount -vt proc proc $SKL/proc
mount -vt sysfs sysfs $SKL/sys
mount -vt tmpfs tmpfs $SKL/run
if [ -h $SKL/dev/shm ]; then
mkdir -pv $SKL/$(readlink $SKL/dev/shm)
fiNow change root to Sklinux (there aren't spaces after the backslashes):
chroot "$SKL" /usr/bin/env -i \
HOME=/root TERM="$TERM" PS1='\u:\w\$ ' \
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin \
/bin/bash --loginIf everything went right, you should see an ufetch (informations about OS, Kernel, Packages, etc). Also the shell prompt should have changed to something like [root@OS /]# .
From now on, if you close and open your terminal, you should chroot back into Sklinux.
Run ip a and look for your main network adapter (e.g eth0 or enp0s3). Notice that lo is irrelevant, since it's just a loopback. Consider <NAME> to be the name of your adapter.
If <NAME> isn't enp0s3 run rm /etc/sysconfig/ifconfig.enp0s3. Otherwise, it's not necessary.
Let's set a static IP address for Sklinux. You must know your gateway and broadcast. Generally, your gateway will be something like 192.168.X.1 and your broadcast will be 192.168.X.255. The X number is very relevant, because it's needed for the static IP address. You can get you broadcast by looking at brd in ip a output, and your gateway by running ip r. It's the chain of numbers right after default via.
Now, choose an IP address for your Sklinux install. A value like 192.168.X.30 should be safe (remember to replace X with your value). So let <NAME> be the name of your adapter, <IP> be your chosen IP address, <BRD> be your broadcast and <GTW> your gateway. Then run:
cat > /etc/sysconfig/ifconfig.<NAME> << "EOF"
ONBOOT=yes
IFACE=<NAME>
SERVICE=ipv4-static
IP=<IP>
GATEWAY=<GTW>
PREFIX=24
BROADCAST=<BRD>
EOFLet's create the fstab file, which is needed to inform the mount points and their respective configurations. Remember the name of your partition and replace the sda1 in the second line of the command below with the correct name.
cat > /etc/fstab << "EOF"
/dev/sda1 / ext4 defaults 1 1
proc /proc proc nosuid,noexec,nodev 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs nosuid,noexec,nodev 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
tmpfs /run tmpfs defaults 0 0
devtmpfs /dev devtmpfs mode=0755,nosuid 0 0
EOFHaving done that, let's configure GRUB. Install it by running grub-install /dev/sda (remember that sda is an example).
For this next part, a brief explanation of how GRUB's naming convention works is important.
A partition named sdXY in Linux would be called (hdZ,Y) in GRUB. A little conversion from X to Z is needed, but it's very simple: The letter a becomes 0, the letter b becomes 1, and so on. Thus, sda1 would be (hd0,1) and sdb2 would be (hd1,2).
Now that you know your "Linux Partition Name - <LPN>" (e.g. sda1) and your "GRUB partition Name - <GPN>" (e.g. (hd0,1)), run:
cat > /boot/grub/grub.cfg << "EOF"
set default=0
set timeout=5
insmod ext2
set root=<GPN>
menuentry "GNU/Linux, Linux 5.5.3-sklinux-1.0" {
linux /boot/vmlinuz-5.5.3-sklinux-1.0 root=/dev/<LPN> ro
}
EOFSklinux was pre-configured taking into consideration that your locale is pt_BR and your clock is set to UTC. If that's not the case, you must configure the following files:
/etc/sysconfig/clock/etc/sysconfig/console/etc/profile
I suggest reading this page and this page, if those need to be changed.
Before booting into the system, know that there are no pre-configured users in Sklinux. There is a root user, though. So when presented the login prompt, enter root as the login and sklinux as the password.
So, exit out of chroot with logout and reboot the system (don't forget to detach the ISO), and you are good to go.
Notice that this procedure should be safe in most host distributions, but if you are not sure, remember to umount everything that was mounted.
Thank you very much for trying out Sklinux GNU/Linux distribution! :D