[Fedora-livecd-list] Fedora Live CD project "kick off"

[Neville Richter]

Colin Charles wrote:

>On Thu, 2005-03-31 at 14:25 -0500, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote:
>  
>
>>So.  To get the ball rolling, how about some introductions?  I'll
>>start.
>>    
>>
>
>I'm Colin Charles, general all-rounder on The Fedora Project. My interst
>in making a LiveCD is so that Fedora can get spread far and wide, and
>that I can also use it for the United Nations LiveCD that I was doing
>(still am doing). It is currently Ubuntu based because Casper actually
>"just works"
>
>I didn't want it Stateless based because of the fact that during the
>pre-FUDCon discussions and just hanging out with most of the @redhat's,
>they figure Stateless is not really a viable option. Xen/anaconda might
>be what is its replacement, just minus LiveCDs
>
>So, lets figure it out and get working on it. I've also been talking to
>Steve Grubb about the Rookery system which I've been meaning to fiddle
>with
>
>Regards
>  
>

Hi, Neville here,

I have some ideas that I would like to see implemented by the Fedora 
Live CD project.  I think you should aim to be at the top of the pack so 
the Fedora Core live CD should really be a step up from what is 
currently available.  The various Knoppix boot CDs are at the cutting 
edge and you need to release something far superior to draw people to 
your products.

As a boot CD builder I have used cloop and squashfs and I would hope 
that someone would add squashfs to the standard Fedora Core kernel 
distribution before starting this project.  This will allow for the 
Fedora livecd to have a lot more files.

The ADIOS boot CD, which I have been developing is currently based on 
Fedora Core 3.  ADIOS uses the busybox/uclibc/isolinux startup which 
then performs a pivot_root to the real filesystem this works fine but I 
had to modify the filesystem so that /usr was read-only squashfs and the 
read-write files are all moved into /var which is a RAM drive (or disk 
partition). 

The Xendemo boot CD is a better model, it uses copy-on-write filesystems 
and I think that including Xen would also make the Fedora livecd very 
attractive to Educational Institutions, which want to teach networking 
and security.

I would like to see most of the services that are needed to complete the 
RedHat Certified Engineer (RHCE) course on the Fedora livecd.  And maybe 
some of the promotional material associated with obtaining the RHCE.

Lastly why not a Fedora live DVD which would support as many languages 
as possible on startup, as there seems to be a huge non-English  
following of RedHat Fedora Core.  Using squashfs you will have plenty of 
room to have both the RPMS and the SRPMS on the DVD as well.

----

Myself and Mark Huth are about to start rebuilding the busbox/uclibc 
software in preparation to building the the next ADIOS boot CD based on 
Fedora Core 4.  We have plans to do most of the above but would be happy 
for RedHat to do the work, although we could also help with ideas and 
coding.  For comparison you can download the current ADIOS boot CD 
version 4.11 from http://dc.qut.edu.au/remote/adios4
username: adios
password: 12qwaszx
Start with run option 1 first, you also need the username adios and 
password 12qwaszx to login.  The  FAQ is on the CD but if you don't get 
that far go to http://dc.qut.edu.au/adios

-- 
regards Neville
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
email:  n.richter at qut.edu.au           room:   S745 Gardens Point   
phone:  +61 07 3864 1928               fax:    +61 07 3221 2384
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Neville Richter, Senior Lecturer     
School of Software Engineering & Data Communications 
Faculty of Information Technology
Queensland University of Technology  
Box 2434  Brisbane 4001  AUSTRALIA