-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi,
those who were on the Debian / Skolelinux Developers Meeting in Greece will already know about it. While there I made a Skolelinux (Sarge) LiveCD. What is special about this LiveCD is that it is not a LiveCD like Knoppix, but a real "tjener"/sarge CD, which has just the bootup stage a little bit common with Knoppix. You just can look where its color and cheerful - thats the "based on Knoppix" part. ;-) What is also special is that its very easy to upgrade the LiveCD - either from the LiveCD itself or from a new tjener / sarge installation. The whole magic for this to work lies in UnionFS (http://www.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/project-unionfs.html). UnionFS makes it possible to overlay several directories. For example one compressed one, which is read-only and another one, which is read-write and for example on a ramdisk. So you could for example also bootup a normal system, make it read-only and lay a UnionFS on a ramdisk over it. You could then install (experimental) packages on the system or even completely screw it up. Then you would just reboot or reset it and all changes are undo-ed. So with UnionFS you do not need the special magic Knoppix did, but you are really just booting a normal 'tjener' / sarge and work with it like it was installed on a harddisk. The SkoleLive Teaser CD is not perfect, yet, but it pretty much separates the base 'tjener' / sarge installation and the changes needed to a LiveCD. Actually those changes are just: - - Setting a root password at startup and - - Setting up X11 via xdebconf / dexconf before starting kdm - - Adding a demo-user with disabled password to autologin with kdm The LiveCD made during the workshop can be found at: http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/skolelive/ If you do not want to download 625 MB, you can also find a much smaller base "sarge". There is also a template plus some scrips available to build it yourself: http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/skolelive-template/ LiveCD making / updating has never been so easy. To make anew CD from tjener / sarge follow the following steps: 1. Install tjener (Skolelinux server) as whatever you want (CombiServer recommended) Note: You need to use kernel 2.6 as the system kernel! 2. Install cloop-utils and mkisofs on tjener / sarge _or_ have some other system on the machine (e.g. booting from a Knoppix), which has these packages. 2 Alternatives now: 2.1 Inside tjener / sarge: Download http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/skolelive-template/make_image and start it. It'll make a big KNOPPIX file. Note: Instead of installing a new sarge / tjener you can also run this command while running from LiveCD and after you made your needed changes. (be sure to be in /mnt or somewhere else where you have enough space) 2.2 Outside tjener / sarge: Mount the tjener root partition to /mnt and mount all subpartitions (e.g. /mnt/boot/). Then get and run: http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/skolelive-template/make_image_outside Again you'll now have a big KNOPPIX file. Note: Making the big KNOPPIX file will take some time. 3. Download http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/skolelive-template/skolelive-template.iso, loop-mount it and copy it to a folder called cdrom/. Put the big KNOPPIX-Image to cdrom/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX. E.g. commands: wget http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/skolelive-template/skolelive-template.iso mkdir mnt cdrom mount -o loop skolelive-template.iso mnt cp -a mnt/* cdrom/ umount mnt mv /where/is/KNOPPIX cdrom/KNOPPIX/ 4. Make a new CD-ROM: Download http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/skolelive-template/make_cdrom. Be sure that you have it like: # ls -la mkcdrom cdrom/ Then you just do: ./make_cdrom and it creates the file skolelive.iso in the current directory. Done. Thats it. You have successfully updated the LiveCD. For testing I suggest installing qemu (something like vmware, but Free Software) and just doing: qemu -cdrom skolelive.iso. To change just some files, you can change cdrom/KNOPPIX/init.sh to do what you want on bootup or just copy your to-copied files to cdrom/KNOPPIX/copy/. The examples in there for password setting, shadow changing and X11 config creation should be quite easy to understand. If there are anymore questions, you can of course reach me per mail or over one of this mailing lists. cu Fabian PS: It would be possible to replace the first stage of the CD also with debian-installer (just add cloop and unionfs udebs), but I have not looked into it - as Knoppix is what I know best. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFCaDXXI0lSH7CXz7MRAhyFAJ0U+IPhC31fTSstK4brDkA4A4prMwCcC9QD FDkJaGmBZ9jqoYGBH3mpKCg= =B3NM -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
