an introduction...

[Bill Nottingham]

Hi, I'm Bill, and I'm one of the resident old persons/man-behind-the-curtain
@ RH.

Something I'm intending to work on in the near future is integrating the
stuff for readonly-root into the base OS; this means that, when done,
most of the stuff in rc/ shouldn't be needed any more.

Ideally, all that kadischi will need to do will be write the
/etc/sysconfig/readonly-root file - there shouldn't need to be any
image prep or similar.

Some of the format of what gets done to enable running readonly
may change somewhat, as the idea is to have a single framework shared
by livecd, stateless, or other similar projects. I'll do my best
to not break kadischi too much without sending patches.

Bill

[Mike Kearey]

On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 16:22 -0500, Bill Nottingham wrote:
>  Hi, I'm Bill, and I'm one of the resident old
> persons/man-behind-the-curtain
>  @ RH.
>  
>  Something I'm intending to work on in the near future is integrating the
>  stuff for readonly-root into the base OS; this means that, when done,
>  most of the stuff in rc/ shouldn't be needed any more.
>  
>  Ideally, all that kadischi will need to do will be write the
>  /etc/sysconfig/readonly-root file - there shouldn't need to be any
>  image prep or similar.
>  
>  Some of the format of what gets done to enable running readonly
>  may change somewhat, as the idea is to have a single framework shared
>  by livecd, stateless, or other similar projects. I'll do my best
>  to not break kadischi too much without sending patches. 
Hi there,

I was thinking that it would be a good design decision to seperate
anything that alters the installed system from the kadisck package and
place it into an RPM package that is installed for the LiveCD system.

ie anything that is currently in kadischi that patches, or alters
anything in the root filesystem of the liveCD instance should be
removed. Anything that is required at run time for a liveCD should be in
a sepearte RPM package.

This will make kadischi as general as possible, and also make it easier
to utilise kadischi to build other RPM based distro's liveCD's - create
a custom RPM for each leaving kadischi itself unchanged.

Cheers,
Michael

[Bill Nottingham]

Michael Kearey (mkearey(a)redhat.com) said: 
>  ie anything that is currently in kadischi that patches, or alters
>  anything in the root filesystem of the liveCD instance should be
>  removed. Anything that is required at run time for a liveCD should be in
>  a sepearte RPM package. 
I wouldn't go that far. There still should be support for a %post
in kadischi, even if it's just for things like enabling/disabling
services, writing out a default config (point at your local LDAP
server? NFS server?), etc.  It's just that the raw bits to actually
run sanely in R/O mode shouldn't need to be in kadischi.

Bill

[J. Hartline]

Bill Nottingham wrote:

>  I wouldn't go that far. There still should be support for a
> %post
>
> in kadischi, even if it's just for things like enabling/disabling
> services, writing out a default config (point at your local LDAP
> server? NFS server?), etc.  It's just that the raw bits to actually
> run sanely in R/O mode shouldn't need to be in kadischi.
>
> Bill
>   
>  
As of now, Kadischi has post_install_scripts that are run while the 
system is still uncompressed.
And yes, some bits are still needed, the initrd, and kernel cannot be 
compressed.
The services, LDAP, NFS configuration sounds really good.
As I've said, Services, Gateway/DHCP server, and runlevel choices are 
obvious ones.
Basically in kadischi now..
kadischi.tar.gz will get unarchived in the ramfs and do a pivot_root.
Init then starts.

You really only have a few directories that aren't writeable.
The ones that are, are: /root /home /etc /var /tmp /opt /mnt and /media.
All other directories are RO.

I believe you could throw some work into the post_install_scripts.

[Tim Wood]

Not having done more than read the docs/faq/etc, I'm going to go on a  
limb and echo this.

My motivation for using kadischi is the ability to create various  
custom live cds ala INSERT, Knoppix but based on the flavor of linux  
I know inside and out.  Although creating custom RPMs could  
theoretically get me there, I can see two problems with this approach

First... the subjective objection... Some tasks just feel wrong (to  
me) in a RPM ... such as modifying Desktop Patterns and menus.

Second... a practical one... When I'm first trying something out, I'd  
like some simpler option.  Right now (if I read the docs write), I've  
got a number of post-RPM ways to modify the CD.  If people no longer  
have a way to make and test something before creating an entire RPM,  
it's going to real hurt the usefulness of this tool.  Right now, it  
feels like a progression of ways to make modifications that can be  
used as appropriate.  Granted I'm exagerating, but I've never liked  
having to build a factory before I can see if my sink idea is any good.

my (uninformed?) 2cents...

Tim Wood



On Jan 18, 2006, at 8:50 AM, Bill Nottingham wrote:

>  I wouldn't go that far. There still should be support for a
> %post
>  in kadischi, even if it's just for things like enabling/disabling
>  services, writing out a default config (point at your local LDAP
>  server? NFS server?), etc.  It's just that the raw bits to actually
>  run sanely in R/O mode shouldn't need to be in kadischi.
>
>  Bill

[Chitlesh GOORAH]

>  Some of the format of what gets done to enable running readonly
>  may change somewhat, as the idea is to have a single framework shared
>  by livecd, stateless, or other similar projects. I'll do my best
>  to not break kadischi too much without sending patches.
>
>  Bill 
Thank you for informing us.
Nevertheless, Ive a question. Should those who are coding for Kadischi
wait till the migration is complete?
Do keep us tuned about the patches and if possible some docs along :)

Chitlesh GOORAH
--
http://clunixchit.blogspot.com