Hi all,
I'm working as an intern with the Open Rights Group this summer, and my personal project for the next six weeks is to create a spin of Fedora that is going to be bundled with lots of free content, promoting the importance of the public domain and a vibrant commons, and then sent out to MPs (members of parliament).
Kanarip said if I stopped by here people would be able to help me out with the spin side of it? I think we're going to use the standard Fedora live disc as our basis, and then we want to add symlinks on the desktop to the media folders that will be kept on the root of the disc. As well as this we're going to want to autostart Firefox and have it open up a copy of a local web page that will help to provide context to the content, as well as navigation.
What do you guys think, will you be able to help out? Even a few links pointing me in the right direction will be a huge help as it's a big project even without the live cd.
Thanks!
Jon
Jonathan Roberts wrote:
Hi all,
I'm working as an intern with the Open Rights Group this summer, and my personal project for the next six weeks is to create a spin of Fedora that is going to be bundled with lots of free content, promoting the importance of the public domain and a vibrant commons, and then sent out to MPs (members of parliament).
Kanarip said if I stopped by here people would be able to help me out with the spin side of it? I think we're going to use the standard Fedora live disc as our basis, and then we want to add symlinks on the desktop to the media folders that will be kept on the root of the disc. As well as this we're going to want to autostart Firefox and have it open up a copy of a local web page that will help to provide context to the content, as well as navigation.
What do you guys think, will you be able to help out? Even a few links pointing me in the right direction will be a huge help as it's a big project even without the live cd.
I did a similar thing, used the livecd tools to provide a demo desktop environment. The basic process which I used was:
1) Use the existing live-* tools to build the ISO or USB. 2) Log in, and set up the desktop how you like it. 3) Copy out the necessary files from the home directory (.nautilus, Desktop, and .gconf I think) 4) Rebuild (1) but add %post section to coy in the files from (3)
-- bk
Bryan Kearney wrote:
I did a similar thing, used the livecd tools to provide a demo desktop environment. The basic process which I used was:
- Use the existing live-* tools to build the ISO or USB.
- Log in, and set up the desktop how you like it.
- Copy out the necessary files from the home directory (.nautilus,
Desktop, and .gconf I think) 4) Rebuild (1) but add %post section to coy in the files from (3)
He could just create a new user on his system and use that profile to be copied onto the live disk during the first compose using the copy_dir setting available in Revisor. We're looking for someone willing to test the now conceptual integration with Sabayon.
-Jeroen
On Sat, 2008-08-02 at 00:29 +0200, Jeroen van Meeuwen (Fedora Project) wrote:
Bryan Kearney wrote:
I did a similar thing, used the livecd tools to provide a demo desktop environment. The basic process which I used was:
- Use the existing live-* tools to build the ISO or USB.
- Log in, and set up the desktop how you like it.
- Copy out the necessary files from the home directory (.nautilus,
Desktop, and .gconf I think) 4) Rebuild (1) but add %post section to coy in the files from (3)
He could just create a new user on his system and use that profile to be copied onto the live disk during the first compose using the copy_dir setting available in Revisor. We're looking for someone willing to test the now conceptual integration with Sabayon.
This sounds perfect :) How would I get the iso to build with the files in the root directory of the CD though? Or would I have to rebuild the ISO myself with mkisofs?
What do you need testing with Sabayon?
Jon
Jonathan Roberts wrote:
On Sat, 2008-08-02 at 00:29 +0200, Jeroen van Meeuwen (Fedora Project) wrote:
Bryan Kearney wrote:
I did a similar thing, used the livecd tools to provide a demo desktop environment. The basic process which I used was:
- Use the existing live-* tools to build the ISO or USB.
- Log in, and set up the desktop how you like it.
- Copy out the necessary files from the home directory (.nautilus,
Desktop, and .gconf I think) 4) Rebuild (1) but add %post section to coy in the files from (3)
He could just create a new user on his system and use that profile to be copied onto the live disk during the first compose using the copy_dir setting available in Revisor. We're looking for someone willing to test the now conceptual integration with Sabayon.
This sounds perfect :) How would I get the iso to build with the files in the root directory of the CD though? Or would I have to rebuild the ISO myself with mkisofs?
What do you need testing with Sabayon?
With Sabayon, we want to integrate the process of tweaking the default live system desktop user's settings into Revisors GUI, so that you select packages, tweak some system settings, add a user, tweak the desktop for that user (Sabayon), and start the compose. The culprit here is that Sabayon would run in an earlier stage then the actual installation of packages, and as such will not be able to represent in any way what the desktop will look like for the user on the resulting product.
For now, I suggest you go with the description of how to do things in the other mail I just sent (and should already have hit your INBOX).
-Jeroen
Jonathan Roberts wrote:
Hi all,
I'm working as an intern with the Open Rights Group this summer, and my personal project for the next six weeks is to create a spin of Fedora that is going to be bundled with lots of free content, promoting the importance of the public domain and a vibrant commons, and then sent out to MPs (members of parliament).
Kanarip said if I stopped by here people would be able to help me out with the spin side of it? I think we're going to use the standard Fedora live disc as our basis, and then we want to add symlinks on the desktop to the media folders that will be kept on the root of the disc. As well as this we're going to want to autostart Firefox and have it open up a copy of a local web page that will help to provide context to the content, as well as navigation.
What do you guys think, will you be able to help out? Even a few links pointing me in the right direction will be a huge help as it's a big project even without the live cd.
Hey Jon,
good to see you here ;-)
First of all this is one of the very important use-cases where I would like to see the external, non-Fedora content not cause us to require you to rebrand anything.
Second, you are going to need to make sure that the packages are not consuming too much space, so basing your live spin off of an existing spin will probably require you to remove some of the packages in that spin. If you use the kickstart in Revisor, use the --report-sizes command line switch (even if you start the GUI) to make it report the 25 most space consuming packages, allowing you to efficiently remove packages requiring the most space accordingly.
Third, if you create a new user on your system, and set it up the way you want it (autostarting Firefox with a certain page, shortcuts on the desktop, etc.), log out and back in to your own user account. Then, copy every file you want to be on the live media into a tree such as:
/tmp/home/user/.gconf /tmp/usr/lib/firefox-1.X/whateverplugin.so
Then, use Revisor's copy_dir setting to copy the tree, in this case /tmp, right onto what is going to be the live system root directory.
Hope this helps!
Kind regards,
Jeroen van Meeuwen
good to see you here ;-)
Thanks!
First of all this is one of the very important use-cases where I would like to see the external, non-Fedora content not cause us to require you to rebrand anything.
I agree, this is not only a cool project for free content, but it's a great chance to show off free software too and I'd love to keep Fedora's brand in there.
Does the spins sig handle this, or will I need to go and talk with the board? Also, what requirements exist for us to keep the Fedora brand?
Second, you are going to need to make sure that the packages are not consuming too much space, so basing your live spin off of an existing spin will probably require you to remove some of the packages in that spin. If you use the kickstart in Revisor, use the --report-sizes command line switch (even if you start the GUI) to make it report the 25 most space consuming packages, allowing you to efficiently remove packages requiring the most space accordingly.
Space isn't such a big constraint for us (I say that now, ask me again in a few days!) as we're using DVD media so even if we have an 800mb Fedora image, it still leaves us with over 3Gb of space for content!
Third, if you create a new user on your system, and set it up the way you want it (autostarting Firefox with a certain page, shortcuts on the desktop, etc.), log out and back in to your own user account. Then, copy every file you want to be on the live media into a tree such as:
/tmp/home/user/.gconf /tmp/usr/lib/firefox-1.X/whateverplugin.so
Then, use Revisor's copy_dir setting to copy the tree, in this case /tmp, right onto what is going to be the live system root directory.
Wow OK that looks very simple and I'll be getting around to that early next week hopefully. One question I have though, is how would we set it up so that we can have symlinks on the desktop that point to files on the root of the CD?
Can we just create the symlinks on the user I create, point them at /media/$disc_label, and they'll be included and set up properly by copy_dir?
Seems a silly question now I've talked it through in my head, but I might as well ask now :)
Hope this helps!
Yeah, I can't believe how easy this is going to be!!
Thanks for the advice,
Jon
On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 16:02 +0100, Jonathan Roberts wrote:
Does the spins sig handle this, or will I need to go and talk with the board? Also, what requirements exist for us to keep the Fedora brand?
The Board's main interest is in trademark approvals, which happens after most of the technical work is done. We're also interested in ensuring spins are useful reconstitutions of Fedora, but this SIG really helps front-load that step in the process.
Hey Jon,
good to see you here ;-)
Third, if you create a new user on your system, and set it up the way you want it (autostarting Firefox with a certain page, shortcuts on the desktop, etc.), log out and back in to your own user account. Then, copy every file you want to be on the live media into a tree such as:
/tmp/home/user/.gconf /tmp/usr/lib/firefox-1.X/whateverplugin.so
Then, use Revisor's copy_dir setting to copy the tree, in this case /tmp, right onto what is going to be the live system root directory.
Right, I've finally reached the point in my project where I'm ready to begin creating the live cd (woo!).
A few questions:
1) I need livna to begin with (haven't converted files to theora/ogg yet). When I specify livna in the ks using the mirrorlist from my livna.repo file, it hangs.
2) copy_dir goes in the revisor.conf file right?
3) Where does this copy the data too? For now I need it to be copied to the home directory of the livecd's user.
I think those are my questions for now. Many thanks for any help any one can give me :)
Jon
Jonathan Roberts wrote:
Hey Jon,
good to see you here ;-)
Third, if you create a new user on your system, and set it up the way you want it (autostarting Firefox with a certain page, shortcuts on the desktop, etc.), log out and back in to your own user account. Then, copy every file you want to be on the live media into a tree such as:
/tmp/home/user/.gconf /tmp/usr/lib/firefox-1.X/whateverplugin.so
Then, use Revisor's copy_dir setting to copy the tree, in this case /tmp, right onto what is going to be the live system root directory.
Right, I've finally reached the point in my project where I'm ready to begin creating the live cd (woo!).
A few questions:
- I need livna to begin with (haven't converted files to theora/ogg
yet). When I specify livna in the ks using the mirrorlist from my livna.repo file, it hangs.
Hmm, what does the kickstart section with regards to the repository configuration look like?
- copy_dir goes in the revisor.conf file right?
Yes, in the model configuration, e.g.:
[f9-i386-foo] description=(...) (...) copy_dir=/tmp (which btw in general is a bad location to choose for copy_dir because of all the other bits that are in there, but OK)
- Where does this copy the data too? For now I need it to be copied
to the home directory of the livecd's user.
Everything in the copy_dir directory tree should be copied over "/" on the live system.
Kind regards,
Jeroen van Meeuwen -kanarip
- I need livna to begin with (haven't converted files to theora/ogg
yet). When I specify livna in the ks using the mirrorlist from my livna.repo file, it hangs.
Hmm, what does the kickstart section with regards to the repository configuration look like?
# Add the repos you wish to use to compose here. At least one of them needs gr$ repo --name=fedora --mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?rep$ repo --name=fedora-source --mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorl$ repo --name=fedora-updates --mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirror$ repo --name=fedora-updates-source --mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org$ repo --name=livna --baseurl=http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/9/i386/
- copy_dir goes in the revisor.conf file right?
Yes, in the model configuration, e.g.:
[f9-i386-foo] description=(...) (...) copy_dir=/tmp (which btw in general is a bad location to choose for copy_dir because of all the other bits that are in there, but OK)
Ah, this bit suddenly made sense to me. So if it's copied to root, I need to put the files I want in say:
/tmp/home/fedora/
which will be copied over to /home/fedora/
? Thanks for the help,
Jon
Jonathan Roberts wrote:
- I need livna to begin with (haven't converted files to theora/ogg
yet). When I specify livna in the ks using the mirrorlist from my livna.repo file, it hangs.
Hmm, what does the kickstart section with regards to the repository configuration look like?
# Add the repos you wish to use to compose here. At least one of them needs gr$ repo --name=fedora --mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?rep$ repo --name=fedora-source --mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorl$ repo --name=fedora-updates --mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirror$ repo --name=fedora-updates-source --mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org$ repo --name=livna --baseurl=http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/9/i386/
This should *just work* but maybe needs a repo for livna-source ?
- copy_dir goes in the revisor.conf file right?
Yes, in the model configuration, e.g.:
[f9-i386-foo] description=(...) (...) copy_dir=/tmp (which btw in general is a bad location to choose for copy_dir because of all the other bits that are in there, but OK)
Ah, this bit suddenly made sense to me. So if it's copied to root, I need to put the files I want in say:
/tmp/home/fedora/
which will be copied over to /home/fedora/
Yes, that's the idea.
Kind regards,
Jeroen van Meeuwen -kanarip
-
Bryan Kearney -
Jeroen van Meeuwen -
Jeroen van Meeuwen -
Jonathan Roberts -
Paul W. Frields