(this page is under construction, ie, not yet completed)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction – What Alcolix is 1

2. Features – What Alcolix has 1

3. Download 1

4. Install – How to use it 1

5. To be continued ... 2

1. Introduction – What Alcolix is

Alcolix is a minimal linux distribution built on a custom linux 2.4-kernel and sporting a hybrid of the most minimalistic yet usable versions of common unix-environment commandline tools. The goal is to make it easily usable for people able to use linux yet have it boot off only a minimal number of floppies. CDROM versions are also considered and some tests of network-booting have been successfully made so in time it might be usable in a lot of situations.

It all started out as an attempt to rescue a lost MBR (Master Boot Record) and got its name due to that alcohol was a big cause of the mistake made loosing the MBR and still a big factor influencing the work making the rescue distro. The first version was specialised to suit just one computer and included only partition table repair tools. A lot has been added over time but all rescue-type tools has been kept.

However I mind you that the current version is in beta and there's room for improovement, some of the recent changes allows for even more tools to be thrown in.

2. Features – What Alcolix has

Alcolix is a fully functional linux mini-distro, programs can be added and run any way you want them to. It boots from one disk and loads another as its root disk (using cpio.bz2 archives).

It features the following at the moment:

Full glibc6 (2.2.5)
Full kernel 2.4.20 (some stuff built in, modules can be loaded after boot) supports:
	USB (UHCI, EHCI, OHCI)
	Filesystems (ext2/3 msdos/vfat iso9660 ntfs)
	Disk formats (umm ... many)
	Virtual Terminals (Alt+F1, Alt+F2 etc ...)
Fully bash-compatible command-line (ash) with line history
GrUB bootloader (can boot hardisks, cdroms and others)
memtest86 (selectable at boot)
Programs (mostly from Debian 3.0r1, some from asmutils and busybox)
	archiving tools:	tar cpio gzip bzip2
	devfsd	(so you don't have to worry about /dev entries)
	disk tools:	fdisk gpart rescuept badblocks hdparm fuser
	filesystem tools:	fsck and mkfs (for ext2/3 minix msdos/vfat reiserfs) tune2fs, mkswap and swapon/off mount/unmount
	module tools:	modinfo modprobe insmod lsmod depmod

And a lot more ... all standard unix commands should be in there and then some .. like rm, cp, chown, chmod, mv , dd etc ... and some funny stuff from asmutils and space-invaders ;)

3. Download

Just go to the Alcolix SourceForge home page and grab the disk images, use RawWrite for Windows or just ”dd if=FILE of=/dev/fd0” if you are on a Unix box.

4. Install – How to use it

Real easy for people into floppy-images and linux. Not so easy for the rest. Installation notes will be added for the ones of you lost already, for all the ones familiar, just download, rawwrite/dd to disks as you usually do :)

I've done some testing with booting over NIC's (network interface card boot) and used NFS, it worked beutifully but I need to test a little more before I include net versions. And I'm suffering from a severe lack of time to work on this project as things stand right now.

5. To be continued ...

Well I just jotted this down in OpenOffice so I have something on the page, sorry for the bad layout :)