Installation procedure: In the following I assume that your are familiar to the Unix/ Linux way of device management. Decide wheter you want to have the root & usr filesystems on a single partition or not. The usr filesystem can be mounted read-only, whereas the root filesystem must be mounted writeable because of /etc/mtab. Of course, the var filesystem must be mounted writable. Consider that if you put it on one partition with the usr filesystem you will loose your potential gain in system security provided by the distinction of static and variable data introduced by the filesystem standard. For the commands given in the follwing I will assume that you want to install the root filesystem on /dev/B, the usr filesystem on /dev/C and the var filesystem on /dev/D. Furthermore I assume that you have a native filesystem on /dev/A where the archives rootfs.tgz, usrfs.tgz, usrdocfs.tar and varfs.tgz reside. A, B, C and D stand for partition names, like sda1, hdb4 or ada3. Start a 1.2.13pl10 kernel with a ramdisk root filesystem. Create filesystems as usual. Unpack the root filesystem onto the partiton you selected. Shutdown and reboot with the new root filesystem. Command sequence: cd /mnt mkdir A B /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/B mount -t msdos /dev/A /mnt/A mount -t ext2 /dev/B /mnt/B cd B tar xzf ../A/rootfs.tgz /sbin/shutdown -r now The system will boot up into single user mode. The shell is ksh. It is smaller and faster than bash, but line editing is painful, so I put bash into the root filesystem, too. You have vi to edit files. Edit /etc/fstab ro reflect your partition design. For the sample environment you would insert the lines: # device directory type options freq pass # /proc /proc proc defaults /dev/B / ext2 defaults 0 1 /dev/A /c msdos defaults /dev/C /usr ext2 defaults 0 2 /dev/D /var ext2 defaults 0 3 Then create filesystems and unpack the var and usr filesystems. Remove tmp and link /tmp to /var/tmp. (/tmp is there for vi.) Shutdown and /reboot. Command sequence: /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/C /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/D mount /dev/A mount /dev/C mount /dev/D cd /usr tar xzf /c/usrfs.tgz cd /var tar xzf /c/varfs.tgz cd / rm -fr tmp ln -s var/tmp tmp /sbin/shutdown -r now Now shutdown and reboot. Command sequence: /sbin/shutdown -r now Your machine should now arise in multi-user mode. Your root password is 'linux'. Customize the files /usr/etc/sendmail.cf /usr/etc/httpd.conf /usr/sbin/ppp-on /usr/sbin/redialer to fit your networking environment. In sendmail.cf you should add a reply address. In httpd.conf you have to change the ftp password. In redialer (called from ppp-on) you must add your login and password and customize the chat script. pppd-2.2.0f only works with a 2.x.x kernel. httpd is configured for caching. innd is not configured.