Kadischi - USB fork?

[J. Hartline]

Hi.

I'm curious if anyone would be interested in seeing a forked Kadischi 
used to build LiveUSB
Fedora Core images that can be written to a flash USB device or even a 
USB external disk..

Is this something that we would be interested in?

J. Hartline

[Filip Tsachev]

Hello,

On 05/09/06, Jasper O'neal Hartline <jasperhartline(a)adelphia.net&gt; wrote:
>  Hi.
>
>  I'm curious if anyone would be interested in seeing a forked Kadischi
>  used to build LiveUSB
>  Fedora Core images that can be written to a flash USB device or even a
>  USB external disk..
>
>  Is this something that we would be interested in? 
Sure thing. I would love to have
'pocket' fedora around.

[J. Hartline]

It wouldn't be terribly difficult. In fact the major difference is simply in
the initramfs rc, and using mkisofs. Instead of invoking mkisofs, you 
would just need
a filesystem in RAM, of course large enough to accommodate the current 
squashed tree
move the squashed rootfs and /boot/ folder into the RAM filesystem, then 
make the image.

This sounds like it could cost alot of RAM, however not much if you 
think about the size of
USB flash sticks today. 512MB, 1GB. So on. In any case the compression 
ratio for SquashFS
is so efficient that 512MB finalized rootfs squashed is about 1.3GB in 
unsquashed packages and files.
That is fairly large for just a pocket Fedora Linux.

I'll work on a little fork of Kadischi on my own time and perhaps will 
send some links
to where to get it, maybe it could be included in Kadischi proper!
I've already built some LiveUSB images myself, and just thought I'd 
share the idea with the list.
LiveUSB Fedora is really what you think it is, it ROCKS!

J. Hartline

I'd like to hear more thoughts on this.
Filip Tsachev wrote:

>  Hello,
>
>  On 05/09/06, Jasper O'neal Hartline <jasperhartline(a)adelphia.net&gt; wrote:
>
> > Hi.
> >
> > I'm curious if anyone would be interested in seeing a forked Kadischi
> > used to build LiveUSB
> > Fedora Core images that can be written to a flash USB device or even a
> > USB external disk..
> >
> > Is this something that we would be interested in?
>
>  Sure thing. I would love to have 'pocket' fedora around.

[Filip Tsachev]

I guess this fork has the potential to utilise different concept as
it's RW media.

Cheers,
Filip

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FilipTsachev

[J. Hartline]

Filip Tsachev wrote:

>  I guess this fork has the potential to utilise different concept as
>  it's RW media.
>  
No. SquashFS is still read-only filesystem.

J. Hartline

[Jane Dogalt]

--- Jasper O'neal Hartline <jasperhartline(a)adelphia.net&gt; wrote:

>  Filip Tsachev wrote:
>  
>  > I guess this fork has the potential to utilise different concept as
>  > it's RW media.
>  >
>  No. SquashFS is still read-only filesystem. 
As you mentioned, it isn't that different (in some manifestations) from the
kadischi output.  Thus why fork instead of just making it a kadischi feature? 
Certainly you would work in your own tree until you've got a clean feature
addition patch, but forking doesn't make sense IMO.  Certainly kadischi should
handle usb sticks as gracefully (or hopefully more gracefully) than knoppix,
and a live-usb is just like sticking your livecd in the stick.

I'm guessing using a fairly static ROM image might be better anyway as a lot of
flash wouldn't hold up that well to frequent small writes (if it was used as a
generic rw fs)

my 0.02...

-jdog


>  
>  J. Hartline
>  
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>  Fedora-livecd-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-livecd-list
>   

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[Ingo Schaefer]

Hello,
Am Mittwoch, den 06.09.2006, 20:27 -0700 schrieb Jane Dogalt:
>  I'm guessing using a fairly static ROM image might be better
> anyway as a lot of
>  flash wouldn't hold up that well to frequent small writes (if it was used as a
>  generic rw fs) 
I agree here.

But with the flash memory you have the possibility to take unused space
on it for the user to store preferences, additional applications and
personal data.

Why not even partitioning the usb drive?

Regards,
Ingo

[J. Hartline]

Jane Dogalt wrote:

> As you mentioned, it isn't that different (in some manifestations)
> from the
> kadischi output.  Thus why fork instead of just making it a kadischi feature? 
> Certainly you would work in your own tree until you've got a clean feature
> addition patch, but forking doesn't make sense IMO.  Certainly kadischi should
> handle usb sticks as gracefully (or hopefully more gracefully) than knoppix,
> and a live-usb is just like sticking your livecd in the stick.
>
> I'm guessing using a fairly static ROM image might be better anyway as a lot of
> flash wouldn't hold up that well to frequent small writes (if it was used as a
> generic rw fs)
>
>   
>  
Ahh I'm not planning on sending it upstream, I'm doing it just for fun.
About the small writes, we use Ext2 not Ext3.

J. Hartline

[Filip Tsachev]

Oops, I forgot about the flash's short RW life cycle, anyhow.. ROM is
fine and making it RW would involve additional coding.

Jasper, USB livespin is something very nice & quiet (for laptop users
mainly, I'm sure desktop PC users also notice the "CD sound"), it
should go upstream. I guess it needs just a bit of coding.

p.s. I'm not sure of the speed difference between cd vs dvd vs usb 2.0 sticks.

-- 
Cheers,
Filip

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FilipTsachev