[ANNOUNCE] VirOS: it's alliiivvvveeee (at least for bug-free LiveUSB persistence)

[Douglas McClendon]

Fellow Fedora LiveCD Enthusiasts:

I present, in lieu of actual FudCON participation, this new software 
release-

VirOS-0.5-20080111, while still a few days away from being a functional 
drop in replacement for livecd-creator which does not require root 
privileges to run, does at least support adding my LiveUSB persistence 
implementation to the Fedora-8 LiveCD, and similar LiveISO images. 
(without requiring root privs, or running much faster as root if you 
like living on the edge)

Basically it works like this-

viros lixmog --output=newlive.iso --addtrait=ZyX.overlay.f8 live.iso

if live.iso was the fedora 8 i686 livecd iso image, then newlive.iso 
will be slightly modified to support LiveUSB persistence.

To use LiveUSB persistence, get the livecd-iso-to-disk script from the 
/LiveOS/ subdirectory on the iso (as normal), and invoke it as normal, 
but add an argument of

--overlay-size-mb 128

to create a 128MB persistence file on the resulting LiveUSB.

Really, you'll have more fun if you make it a 1024MB persistence file on 
a 2G LiveUSB.

You can download the latest release of VirOS (in .tgz/.srpm/.rpm) here

http://filteredperception.org/downloads/viros-0.5.20080111/

and if you'd rather not test my software, but just check out the 
official f8 livecd patched to support the feature, look here

http://filteredperception.org/downloads/overlay/20080111/

I'll omit the details on xdelta patching, as they were in a prior mail, 
and to highlight the fact that this is still all very alpha/developer 
quality stuff.  I have not done a complete code review myself, therefore 
it is too early for me to even ask others to do a code review.

But having finally ironed out the last known bugs with the persistence 
feature, and having put together a reasonable rpm of the rest of the 
stuff, I am actually pretty pleased with how it's shaping up....

Bug reports are welcome and expected...  Enjoy...

-dmc