Re: [liberationtech] Liberte Linux
..on Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 07:12:21PM -0400, Richard Brooks wrote: I have a student trying to make a modified build of the Liberte Linux distribution. If anyone would have time and be willing to give her some pointers, please send me an email and I will forward to her. A modified build of GNU/Linux has no intrinsic value in itself. Tell us, in the event she can't herself in English, what she's trying to do and why. Cheers, -- Julian Oliver http://julianoliver.com http://criticalengineering.org -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Liberte Linux
On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 8:58 AM, Richard Brooks r...@acm.org wrote: On 4/26/2013 1:26 AM, Julian Oliver wrote: ..on Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 07:12:21PM -0400, Richard Brooks wrote: I have a student trying to make a modified build of the Liberte Linux distribution. If anyone would have time and be willing to give her some pointers, please send me an email and I will forward to her. A modified build of GNU/Linux has no intrinsic value in itself. Tell us, in the event she can't herself in English, what she's trying to do and why. Yes, doing a custom build has no intrinsic value. And if I had felt there would be general interest in the details of what we want her to do and why, it would have been included. She is new and having some problems. I felt that someone here might have the knowledge and be willing to help. Evidently, this list is meant to discuss the fascinating details of the reply-to field. Having done a few myself, solving even simple problems with custom builds can be very time consuming and requires a fair amount of knowledge. Without an indication of the specifics of what your student is trying to do, it may be difficult to find volunteers/tutors. My recommendation would be to contact a nearby LUG (Linux Users Group); typically they have members who are able and willing to help in situations like this. Personally I've a got a pretty hefty workload but if you're unable to find local help, contact me offlist and I'll try to arrange something (either with myself or with someone in my networks). Best regards, - Scott -- Scott Elcomb @psema4 on Twitter / Identi.ca / Github more Atomic OS: Self Contained Microsystems http://code.google.com/p/atomos/ Member of the Pirate Party of Canada http://www.pirateparty.ca/ -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Liberte Linux
On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 2:12 AM, Richard Brooks r...@clemson.edu wrote: I have a student trying to make a modified build of the Liberte Linux distribution. If anyone would have time and be willing to give her some pointers, please send me an email and I will forward to her. Hi Richard, I saw her email, but was abroad during the week, sorry — will send her some pointers tomorrow. There is also a build-time issue with the outdated kernel, will try to update it by then as well. -- Maxim Kammerer Liberté Linux: http://dee.su/liberte -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Liberte Linux
Maxim Kammerer: On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 2:12 AM, Richard Brooks r...@clemson.edu wrote: I have a student trying to make a modified build of the Liberte Linux distribution. If anyone would have time and be willing to give her some pointers, please send me an email and I will forward to her. Hi Richard, I saw her email, but was abroad during the week, sorry — will send her some pointers tomorrow. There is also a build-time issue with the outdated kernel, will try to update it by then as well. Thanks for working on Liberte Linux and helping people to build it from source. Even if there are no changes, I find it very important to be able to build the final product from source. I wonder - have you thought about doing gitian builds? It seems like an insanely complicated task for some programs (eg: Firefox) but other programs could be straight forward... All the best, Jacob -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
Re: [liberationtech] Liberte Linux
On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 11:14 PM, Jacob Appelbaum ja...@appelbaum.net wrote: Thanks for working on Liberte Linux and helping people to build it from source. Even if there are no changes, I find it very important to be able to build the final product from source. I agree completely, that's why I see using Gentoo as something so critical to the project. Without actually building binaries from source, one does not really take advantage of open source. Besides the obvious benefits, you get e.g., the ability to use hardened toolchain, apply functionality or security-extending patches, etc. I wonder - have you thought about doing gitian builds? It seems like an insanely complicated task for some programs (eg: Firefox) but other programs could be straight forward... I didn't know about Gitian actually, but looking at it right now, it seems that using it for a distribution like Liberté would require at least implementing support for “frozen” builds — i.e., working with specific Gentoo stage3 and portage snapshots instead of the latest ones. I considered this in the past, but didn't find it very useful for development, although it would be useful for people who want to build an image identical to a given release. After asking around, it seemed to me that most people want to have the latest updates as well (in Liberté or in portage packages). Anyway, in addition to “frozen” builds, you would probably need to disable parallel make completely, and somehow make sure that file timestamps do not creep into binaries. No idea how difficult the latter is, although it's probably not that difficult for Liberté, since there is already a process at hand that prevents e.g. using hostname and other details during emerge (“uname” substitution), or current timestamp during kernel build, etc. Some packages (like Perl) insist on creating text configuration files with gathered host information, but those packages are currently not included in Liberté (previously I had to include cleanup for such files into the build process). So, in summary, deterministic builds are probably possible, but the devil is in the details, especially for a distribution image that contains many packages inside. -- Maxim Kammerer Liberté Linux: http://dee.su/liberte -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
[liberationtech] Liberte Linux
I have a student trying to make a modified build of the Liberte Linux distribution. If anyone would have time and be willing to give her some pointers, please send me an email and I will forward to her. Thank you, -Richard Brooks -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
