Quoth the FAQ: "You can also roll your own distribution and upload it." I have just had a quick look at the wiki front page and can't find any reference to that, neither did anything come up in a forum search.

Just _how_ does one do this? If the kernel is a given, how you can you have a "roll your own" unless it's based on one of the existing distros?

The kernel is a given, but don't forget that the same Linode-provided kernel is used regardless of which distribution you choose, even if you choose it from the Distro Wizard. In other words, it's not distro-specific; in fact, very few kernels nowadays will be distro-specific, since most will compile everything in a modular fashion. The kernel provided by Linode is monolithic, but that's okay because the hardware on each Linode is, I suspect, the same or very close. (Does UML emulate specific hardware or is everything virtualised?)

To actually roll your own distro you'll need to be aware of the steps at http://www.linode.com/wiki/index.php/Cu ... stribution to get it working properly on Linode. Otherwise, you should be able to proceed as with a normal distro, I guess.

Although this does bring to mind one question I have, if anybody can answer it - what happens so far as boot loaders go?

Linode's don't have a boot loader. The host system performs those functions.

I have done this on the xen beta program, i'm not sure if this works on uml, though it should be the same.

1, you'll need a distro build with the distro wizard to start off.

2, then add a disk image for your new distro, and add it to the existing distro's config profile.

3, boot your distro

4, do a chroot install of the distro of your choice, the kernel should work fine
I had a problem because for some reason the xen linodes get the (deprecated) nodevfs kernel parameter passed to them at boot time, and my distro was trying to boot into the nodevfs runlevel. I went around this by adding a nodevfs runlevel to my distro.

5, add a config profile to your linode account using the disk image you installed the chroot onto.
Done.
I'm running sourcemage linux installed this way.
Also, for custom distros, imho it's best to deactivat all the xenify options in the config profile.
Hope this helps!
Cheers!