Ibidem:Thanks - I will try that.That's BUSYBOX=1; it turns on busybox defconfig.
Using chroot-environment for the below testing (i486):
Tried to compile packages needed to populate an puppy-like initrd.gz -
fileutils-4.1, disktype-9, e2fsprogs-1.40.2, elspci-1.0, findutils-4.1.20,
guess_fstype_withext4_test1, util-linux-2.13-pre7, busybox-20100217, ntfs-3g-2009.3.8
and fuse-2.6.0 - but thats not building yet...I cant get kernel headers installed correctly for fuse-build to run.
Then tried to build some of the tools needed to construct initrd & the iso-image:
mksquashfs30, lzma & mkisofs
mksquashfs builds ok, lzma I havent tried yet - and with mkisofs I am stuck:
cdrkit-1.1.10 drags in libcap (which cries for perl but that can be patched out) and cmake which fails building.
Then tried to build cdrtools-1.10 but that fails too.
Then tried mkisofs-1.13 but that fails as well.
Guess its much easier to leave the construct of initrd and isoimage to be done with the host-tools - and use the toolchain to build the content...
Update 20130705: With BUSYBOX=1 I had to backport BB to busybox-1.20.2 to get host-tools build - and the toybox does not buil right. Downgraded kernel to 3.8 to get a clean patch of aufs - which is needed for a puppy-like boot. But now I have a kernel and an initrd.gz that are able to boot pupngo with-out any modules present in initrd.gz.