Live CDs
After seeing Damn Small Linux at Software Freedom Day, I am going to try to modify the live CD adapting this how-to... https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomization ...to add some programs like Emacs, and parted, and maybe some other minor alterations. Unless someone can recommend an easier way. If it works, I will post what I did differently. Aidan
Re: Live CDs
I'm not much of a fan of Live CDs anymore, but when I was, I found Slax to be a remarkably easy system for creating custom Live CDs. Everything is in modules you just add them to the right subdirectory on the cd and they are loaded. There's a nice software system for creating live cds, though it's Windoze based! I think it's called myslax creator. Kerry. On 15/09/2007, Aidan Gauland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: After seeing Damn Small Linux at Software Freedom Day, I am going to try to modify the live CD adapting this how-to... https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomization ...to add some programs like Emacs, and parted, and maybe some other minor alterations. Unless someone can recommend an easier way. If it works, I will post what I did differently. Aidan
Re: Live CDs
Hi, Live CDs are literally taking off. There are gazillions of different ones to use. Some are focussed on being incredibly small, 2..100mb. fitting the maximum amount into 700mb being a demonstration of a bug distro (fedora live say) They all vary. Some are brilliant at hardware detection, others are mediocre. Bewarned - the instructions on remastering are often terse, and neglect points that are kinda crucial. I am of the view it is easier to take a cut down distro and add things to it, which is safer than taking stuff of (to make room for your additions). You see, if you take stuff off, what gets broken? A colleague suggested basing things on fedora 7, and using the make live cd tool, as the ideal approach. He said it got him to his desired end goal the quickest. My thinking at the moment is to use puppy and add to it, via puppy unleashed, and see how that goes. I have lots of dud CDs so far, and expect to collect a few more.. However, puppy will let you remaster to a USB memory stick, and that might save some angst over CDs going wrong. Derek. = On Sat, 15 Sep 2007, Kerry Mayes wrote: I'm not much of a fan of Live CDs anymore, but when I was, I found Slax to be a remarkably easy system for creating custom Live CDs. Everything is in modules you just add them to the right subdirectory on the cd and they are loaded. There's a nice software system for creating live cds, though it's Windoze based! I think it's called myslax creator. Kerry. On 15/09/2007, Aidan Gauland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: After seeing Damn Small Linux at Software Freedom Day, I am going to try to modify the live CD adapting this how-to... https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomization ...to add some programs like Emacs, and parted, and maybe some other minor alterations. Unless someone can recommend an easier way. If it works, I will post what I did differently. Aidan -- Derek Smithies Ph.D. IndraNet Technologies Ltd. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ph +64 3 365 6485 Web: http://www.indranet-technologies.com/
Re: Live CDs
Graeme (sorry if I misspelled your name) at the SFD told me about that, but I came from the Mac cult and don't have Windows. But I'll keep Slax in mind as plan C. I'm doing this for the learning experience, and because I can. Isn't why the Linux kernel was created originally? But I will try to thoroughly test my changes to make sure I didn't break anything. On 15/09/2007, at 7:42 PM, Kerry Mayes wrote: I'm not much of a fan of Live CDs anymore, but when I was, I found Slax to be a remarkably easy system for creating custom Live CDs. Everything is in modules you just add them to the right subdirectory on the cd and they are loaded. There's a nice software system for creating live cds, though it's Windoze based! I think it's called myslax creator. Kerry. On 15/09/2007, Aidan Gauland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: After seeing Damn Small Linux at Software Freedom Day, I am going to try to modify the live CD adapting this how-to... https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomization ...to add some programs like Emacs, and parted, and maybe some other minor alterations. Unless someone can recommend an easier way. If it works, I will post what I did differently. Aidan
Re: Live CDs
Hi Yes, you spelled my name correctly. I would look for topics on remastering knoppix or specifically on remastering damn small. Here are some on remastering damn small that I could find: http://www.linuxforums.org/desktop/remastering_dsl:_a_short_howto_with_a_long_preamble.html http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi?;act=ST;f=12;t=7177 Best of luck Regards Graeme Kiyoto-Ward Aidan Gauland wrote: Graeme (sorry if I misspelled your name) at the SFD told me about that, but I came from the Mac cult and don't have Windows. But I'll keep Slax in mind as plan C. I'm doing this for the learning experience, and because I can. Isn't why the Linux kernel was created originally? But I will try to thoroughly test my changes to make sure I didn't break anything. On 15/09/2007, at 7:42 PM, Kerry Mayes wrote: I'm not much of a fan of Live CDs anymore, but when I was, I found Slax to be a remarkably easy system for creating custom Live CDs. Everything is in modules you just add them to the right subdirectory on the cd and they are loaded. There's a nice software system for creating live cds, though it's Windoze based! I think it's called myslax creator. Kerry. On 15/09/2007, Aidan Gauland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: After seeing Damn Small Linux at Software Freedom Day, I am going to try to modify the live CD adapting this how-to... https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomization ...to add some programs like Emacs, and parted, and maybe some other minor alterations. Unless someone can recommend an easier way. If it works, I will post what I did differently. Aidan
Re: Live CDs
I would look for topics on remastering knoppix or specifically on remastering damn small. Here are some on remastering damn small that I could find: http://www.linuxforums.org/desktop/remastering_dsl:_a_short_howto_with_a_long_preamble.html http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi?;act=ST;f=12;t=7177 There are probably dozens of LiveCD builders. In order for you to get an alternative point of view here's another URL for you to peruse:- http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/catalyst/ -- Sincerely etc. Christopher Sawtell
Re: online storage
gmail? On 14/09/2007, Josh James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: has any one got or knows a good online storage service that works with an ubuntu app and can be encrypted
Re: online storage
Against terms and conditions :-) Gmail is for email. Amazon S3 is pretty good, get a user-space filesystem and rsync into it. Of course encrypting objects before sending them, and being efficient in bandwidth usage are generally mutually exclusive ... On 16/09/2007, Carl Cerecke [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: gmail? On 14/09/2007, Josh James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: has any one got or knows a good online storage service that works with an ubuntu app and can be encrypted
Re: Rebuilding debian boxes from package list...
Hi-ho, I sorta documented it, here's the overview: The background to the 'issue' is that the physical machine had a custom kernel for some odd hardware, that gave me poor/weird results using ghost, p2v, and normal tarball backup/restore type techniques. Steps, sorta: - Note down list functionality I want to move from the physical to the virtual. (In my case it was apache, mysql, php, cronjobs, rsyncd config and a scripts directory) - apt-get upgrade on the physical machine to make sure it is current and working. - Make tarball of data, plus /etc, /root, /var, onto a network server. - create selection list for dpkg (dpkg --get-selections blah.txt) - build new virtual machine using etch netinst CD, with no roles or packages (Very basic install) and get it on the network. - copy the /etc/apt/sources.lst from the physical to the virtual - shut off the physical. - apt-get update on the virtual - dpkg --set-selections blah.tt on virtual. - apt-get dselect-upgrade on the virtual, which 'makes it the same' from a package point of view. - reboot the virtual, check that it's working, ish. - mount network drive with tarball in it on the new machine. - selectively restore the stuff I needed for the functionality. In my case: /var/spool/cron /var/lib/mysql /etc/mysql/debian.cnf (for maint. user password setting) /etc/apache2/sites-available/default /var/www /root/cronjobs /etc/network/interfaces (Fixed IP config) /etc/hostname /etc/rsyncd.conf /etc/default/rsync - Reboot and check things work. - snapshot the virtual, and backup the vmdk's to DR vmware server. - re-deloy the old physical hardware as a doorstop. :-). This has process has had some real advantages for me over a complete restore/move, as the box(es) concerned had quite a bit of development stuff on them, which has effectively been removed by this 'cleanup' install, and all the source-code built weird stuff is now gone. Whole process takes about 15 minutes, as we have an on-site mirror of the Debian archive. This has highlighted an issue with DR of 2.6.X kernel machines using tarballs, which is effectively what I was trying to do. Restore a machine on different hardware. Tarballs have always worked under 2.4.X for me. I'll be on the hunt for a good generic DR process once my current issues are out of the way. (We have legislative requirements for simple/demonstrable DR) Other things that broke it with a move/restore would be down to kernel modules, fstab differences, initramfs differences, boot block getting munged, /lib/modules mess from install/restore of similar/same version kernels, and the mess the source physical was in from being a development platform that became production over time without a rebuild. All these problems went away with the rebuild. And for what it's worth, the current vmware converter works really well for Windows 2003 servers, but our LCS server at work and one other refused to convert successfully to virtual using it, so we had to rebuild them as well... Cheers, Me. (No warranty is either expressed or implied in that lot! :-) ). On Fri, 2007-09-14 at 10:43 +1200, Kerry Mayes wrote: I don't suppose you could document what you did? I carefully downloaded vmware converter and spent half an hour trying to get it to work on an Ubuntu physical machine before realising that it only works on windows machines!
