[Fedora-livecd-list] ARRRG

[Tim Wood]

Douglas, I'm going to stirfry your email in responding

> While nothing I'm about to say helps you now, here is a reiteration  
> of my theoretical QA plan to mitigate similar problems in the future-
>
> A) install livecd-tools and revisor by default in a standard spin.  
> developer spin seems like the right place.  I don't think either  
> will bring in many new dependencies, i.e. take up signifcant space.
>
> B) have a dedicated QA server spinning up daily spins of (A).   
> These QA spins would be served via bittorrent.  This server would  
> be f7(stable) pulling in updates via yum daily.  After being  
> created, these spins would be booted under headless qemu,  
> displaying to a vnc recorded session.  These boot-videos would be  
> available via bittorrent as well, as well as basic boot-speed  
> timing analysis, and logfiles from the boot.
>
> C) have another server like (B), except which is a rawhide, updated  
> daily system, running git livecd-tools, doing exactly the same thing.

I'm using vmware in places of qemu.  Since I only have two physical  
machines to use for everything, I have one virtual machine that  
handles just development of LiveCDs with Revisor and a second that's  
used for testing.  The nice thing is that if an RPM ever does blow up  
my LiveCD creation machine, building another one (if I can ever  
figure out how to get one that stays working) doesn't take much  
time.  Of course that LiveCD with Revisor on it that I asked about a  
week ago would make things very cool.

Starting in the middle of the process, what I do is:
* boot the last livecd image
* based on what I find in testing, adjust the kickstart file and my  
custom rpm.  I'll continue the testing/tweaking project until I've  
made enough changes that there's a significant divergance between the  
original and the next rev
* create another livecd
* wash rinse repeat

> FWIW, I haven't noticed any similar problems lately, but I use  
> livecd-creator, and not revisor, which apparently utilizes a  
> significantly forked version of livecd-creator.
[snip]
> Certainly F8 doesn't exist yet, so one must not have the  
> expectation that it can be used for a stable development system.

Revisor blows up randomly.  When it blows up it takes far too long to  
get a system that works.  It usually entails creating a kickstart all  
over again to get one that creates LiveCDs.  Each rev seems to bring  
new quirks such as buttons that do nothing but blow up Revisor.   
Fedora 8 is currently in Beta 2; usually a stage where a major button  
causes everything to blow up.

As far as livecd-creator... after I posted my email I realized that  
if no one has any ideas after three days on the MBR problem, they're  
probably not going to have suggestions on a broader question like how  
to make Revisor work on an ongoing basis in a reasonable amount of  
time.  If I'm going to have a shot at getting this put to bed before  
my next big paying project comes in (and causes me to shelf this for  
somewhere between 2 months and the end of time), I'm going to have to  
switch to another way of getting there.  Strangely... google had just  
gotten me backed into livecd-creator when your email popped in.  I'm  
going to try that.  If I ever get around to creating that LiveCD for  
mastering LiveCDs, it'll probably be livecd-creator.

Tim