Hello everyone,
I am Ravindra working on creating a Livecd for the OSCAR using the Scientific Linux Distro as part of the Summer Of Code 2006 contest held by Google.
First things first, Thanks to all of you guys at OSCAR for giving me a chance to work for OSCAR..in the SOC
Sorry, for not mailing to the list until now and not making you a part of the project. It wasnot intentional....
I was not exactly working on OSCAR yet, I was just working on how to build a live cd as proposed in my proposal... So, this was the sole reason for me not being too active on this list... But since I am done building a test Live cd from now on, I would need help from all of you guys to understand OSCAR and put it into the LiveCD....Hopefully someday a OSCAR diskless Cluster!!!
The Screenshots of the test LiveCD are posted in the blog Or Click HERE to see the Screenshots
The TEST LIVE CD::
This Test liveCD uses the GNOME DE and hence is very Large on memory size (650MB... Need alot of work there).. I chose GNOME just to test how big it could get.... and apparently it could really really really BIG so, better to have ICEWM on the livecd. Any other suggestions here are welcome...
There is one small problem with the livecd... The Xserver has to be started manually ( coz the scripts I used were built for ICEWM and not GNOME ... Found it after making the iso ...too late huh!!). It not such a big deal... Could be fixed in the next release!
The livecds I have built earlier were based on Morphix and Let me tell you... it a whole lot different and easy to build a livecd based on morphix and customize it.... I wish OSCAR could soon be ported to Debian (OoD ) and we could have a morphix based livecd within no time.....coz the livecd using Morphix is very well structure, modular, flexible and smaller... And not to mention Zillion times Faster than the Linuxlive scripts based one....
This is my schedule for the project as proposed...
1. Understanding the OSCAR framework 2 weeks, 5th June
2. Understanding how to build liveCD 2 weeks, 19th June
3. Building a customised SL LiveCD 10 days, 29th June
4. Mid term evaluation (n payment ) 30th June
5. Porting the OSCAR Core 20 days 20th July
6. Testing the OSCAR Core 5 days, 25th July
7. Porting the OSCAR packages 15 days, 10th August
8. Testing the full OSCAR suite 5 days, 15th August
9. Grace period6 days, 20th August
10. Final Submission 21st August
Its gives me pleasure to say that I am right on schedule and even early on hitting the 3rd target ( i.e. Building a customized livecd ... thanks to Geoff who is my mentor BTW, and Urs Beyerle(SL live cd creator) and others who have helped me in doing it)
I have setup a blog for this project Do check it out ... OSCARLIVE BLOG
The blog is up to date on what I have been doing and shows how I went about building the test livecd.... Your comments are most welcome!!!!
Most of the posts might seem Amateur coz I have never worked on building a livecd for redhat based system...for that matter Never used a redhat based distro before so had some simple newbie problems ( geoff was always there to help so wasnt such big problem).
So, most of my time in the past one month was spent on working my way around the redhat and getting to know it better and understand what is needed to build a livecd for redhat...
You can check out my proposal @ OSCAR LIVE Proposal
So, let me explain you what I was doing for the past one month to build the livecd...
1. Understanding the Scientific Linux 4.3 (Downloading the 4 CDS took quite a while with the stupid connection I had )
2. How to install, run and customize it ( GRUB gave me some trouble )
3. Trying to fix the problems while installation and running, that I faced. (Yum was a pain to figure out !!! Up2date ROCKS)
4. Learning how to build a livecd ( linuxlive scripts )
5. Getting the resources needed and understanding why they are needed ( studying Unionfs, squashfs and others)
6. Putting it all together
7. Customizing the LinuxLive scripts to suit the Scientific Linux (thanks to Urs Beyerle..Most of the work is done for ICEWM)
8. Trying to put the latest kernel 2.6.17 ( Had a lot of trouble there trying to recompile the kernel through rpms and sources... totally a whole biggggggg story.... Thanks to Geoff ).
9. Build and install the tools needed to build the livecd ( UNIONFS, kernel packages, squashfs and other tools)... Man dont even get me started on this!!!!!!!!!
10. Run the linuxlive scripts to build a miniLivecd...( It was all that is needed to make a livecd... Great JOB by Linuxlive people and Urs Beyerle for customizing the scripts).
11. test the LiveCD with Emulator (QEMU ... Observation --- xserver doesnt start (have to start manually), the display needs to be reconfigured( system-config-display ) and the GNOME makes it even slower to boot.)
That was what I have done!!!!!
Technical details:::
The list of the Tools can be found at Tools LINK
Some of the tools needed:
kernel-2.6.9-34.EL.livecd.i686.rpm
kernel-devel-2.6.9-34.EL.livecd.i686.rpm
kernel-module-fuse-2.6.9-34.EL.livecd-2.4.2-2.SL.i686.rpm
kernel-module-ndiswrapper-2.6.9-34.EL.livecd-1.5-0.SL.1.i686.rpm
kernel-module-openafs-2.6.9-34.EL.livecd-1.4.0-22.sl4.psi.i686.rpm
kernel-module-openafs-2.6.9-34.EL.livecd-1.4.0-8.SL.i686.rpm
For those of you who want to help me figure out how to reduce the size of the livecd (currently 650MB for Mini LiveCD ).. Please help me... If you have any suggestion apart for "choose another DE and not GNOME " !!!
Once again, I really am sorry for now being active on the oscar-devel list.. Its just that I wasnt technically working on OSCAR yet..But I was constantly in touch with Geoff and he guided me at every step!!!!
I need some really suggestions on
1. Which distribution do you wanna see livecd based on? See P.S if this questions sounds stupid at this point!
2. What Desktop Environment do you need?
3. Is the boot time really that big a deal?
4. How can I put a 600 MB liveCD iso online for Download for free?
5. How to setup some mirrors for that.. If I am not thinking too far!!
6. Confused on SVN .. CVS and others... Never used them before so.. If I need to use them, why and how?
Thats all for the time being.... Hope the questions are tooo trivial!!! Plzzz, Do remeber I am just a student new to FOSS development.
Thanks for reading this longgggggggg mail.,
Do check the BLOG and the links,
Hoping to work with you soon,
I am Ravindra working on creating a Livecd for the OSCAR using the Scientific Linux Distro as part of the Summer Of Code 2006 contest held by Google.
First things first, Thanks to all of you guys at OSCAR for giving me a chance to work for OSCAR..in the SOC
Sorry, for not mailing to the list until now and not making you a part of the project. It wasnot intentional....
I was not exactly working on OSCAR yet, I was just working on how to build a live cd as proposed in my proposal... So, this was the sole reason for me not being too active on this list... But since I am done building a test Live cd from now on, I would need help from all of you guys to understand OSCAR and put it into the LiveCD....Hopefully someday a OSCAR diskless Cluster!!!
The Screenshots of the test LiveCD are posted in the blog Or Click HERE to see the Screenshots
The TEST LIVE CD::
This Test liveCD uses the GNOME DE and hence is very Large on memory size (650MB... Need alot of work there).. I chose GNOME just to test how big it could get.... and apparently it could really really really BIG so, better to have ICEWM on the livecd. Any other suggestions here are welcome...
There is one small problem with the livecd... The Xserver has to be started manually ( coz the scripts I used were built for ICEWM and not GNOME ... Found it after making the iso ...too late huh!!). It not such a big deal... Could be fixed in the next release!
The livecds I have built earlier were based on Morphix and Let me tell you... it a whole lot different and easy to build a livecd based on morphix and customize it.... I wish OSCAR could soon be ported to Debian (OoD ) and we could have a morphix based livecd within no time.....coz the livecd using Morphix is very well structure, modular, flexible and smaller... And not to mention Zillion times Faster than the Linuxlive scripts based one....
This is my schedule for the project as proposed...
1. Understanding the OSCAR framework 2 weeks, 5th June
2. Understanding how to build liveCD 2 weeks, 19th June
3. Building a customised SL LiveCD 10 days, 29th June
4. Mid term evaluation (n payment ) 30th June
5. Porting the OSCAR Core 20 days 20th July
6. Testing the OSCAR Core 5 days, 25th July
7. Porting the OSCAR packages 15 days, 10th August
8. Testing the full OSCAR suite 5 days, 15th August
9. Grace period6 days, 20th August
10. Final Submission 21st August
Its gives me pleasure to say that I am right on schedule and even early on hitting the 3rd target ( i.e. Building a customized livecd ... thanks to Geoff who is my mentor BTW, and Urs Beyerle(SL live cd creator) and others who have helped me in doing it)
I have setup a blog for this project Do check it out ... OSCARLIVE BLOG
The blog is up to date on what I have been doing and shows how I went about building the test livecd.... Your comments are most welcome!!!!
Most of the posts might seem Amateur coz I have never worked on building a livecd for redhat based system...for that matter Never used a redhat based distro before so had some simple newbie problems ( geoff was always there to help so wasnt such big problem).
So, most of my time in the past one month was spent on working my way around the redhat and getting to know it better and understand what is needed to build a livecd for redhat...
You can check out my proposal @ OSCAR LIVE Proposal
So, let me explain you what I was doing for the past one month to build the livecd...
1. Understanding the Scientific Linux 4.3 (Downloading the 4 CDS took quite a while with the stupid connection I had )
2. How to install, run and customize it ( GRUB gave me some trouble )
3. Trying to fix the problems while installation and running, that I faced. (Yum was a pain to figure out !!! Up2date ROCKS)
4. Learning how to build a livecd ( linuxlive scripts )
5. Getting the resources needed and understanding why they are needed ( studying Unionfs, squashfs and others)
6. Putting it all together
7. Customizing the LinuxLive scripts to suit the Scientific Linux (thanks to Urs Beyerle..Most of the work is done for ICEWM)
8. Trying to put the latest kernel 2.6.17 ( Had a lot of trouble there trying to recompile the kernel through rpms and sources... totally a whole biggggggg story.... Thanks to Geoff ).
9. Build and install the tools needed to build the livecd ( UNIONFS, kernel packages, squashfs and other tools)... Man dont even get me started on this!!!!!!!!!
10. Run the linuxlive scripts to build a miniLivecd...( It was all that is needed to make a livecd... Great JOB by Linuxlive people and Urs Beyerle for customizing the scripts).
11. test the LiveCD with Emulator (QEMU ... Observation --- xserver doesnt start (have to start manually), the display needs to be reconfigured( system-config-display ) and the GNOME makes it even slower to boot.)
That was what I have done!!!!!
Technical details:::
The list of the Tools can be found at Tools LINK
Some of the tools needed:
kernel-2.6.9-34.EL.livecd.i686.rpm
kernel-devel-2.6.9-34.EL.livecd.i686.rpm
kernel-module-fuse-2.6.9-34.EL.livecd-2.4.2-2.SL.i686.rpm
kernel-module-ndiswrapper-2.6.9-34.EL.livecd-1.5-0.SL.1.i686.rpm
kernel-module-openafs-2.6.9-34.EL.livecd-1.4.0-22.sl4.psi.i686.rpm
kernel-module-openafs-2.6.9-34.EL.livecd-1.4.0-8.SL.i686.rpm
For those of you who want to help me figure out how to reduce the size of the livecd (currently 650MB for Mini LiveCD ).. Please help me... If you have any suggestion apart for "choose another DE and not GNOME " !!!
Once again, I really am sorry for now being active on the oscar-devel list.. Its just that I wasnt technically working on OSCAR yet..But I was constantly in touch with Geoff and he guided me at every step!!!!
I need some really suggestions on
1. Which distribution do you wanna see livecd based on? See P.S if this questions sounds stupid at this point!
2. What Desktop Environment do you need?
3. Is the boot time really that big a deal?
4. How can I put a 600 MB liveCD iso online for Download for free?
5. How to setup some mirrors for that.. If I am not thinking too far!!
6. Confused on SVN .. CVS and others... Never used them before so.. If I need to use them, why and how?
Thats all for the time being.... Hope the questions are tooo trivial!!! Plzzz, Do remeber I am just a student new to FOSS development.
Thanks for reading this longgggggggg mail.,
Do check the BLOG and the links,
Hoping to work with you soon,
Ravindra.
P.S: I am willing to work rethink my choice of building livecd based on Scientific Linux if you can help me choose the best distro for OSCAR! coz I want to have the BEST LiveCD for the OSCAR... Since I know how to build a livecd from the linuxlive scripts shouldnt matter much what distro I use (if I am thinking right), that should not make the job any differnent!!
Which distro do you wanna see OSCAR livecd based on? How about FEDORA??
Comments plzzz!!!
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