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Hello,
My objective is to run a collection of virtual systems that are stored in arbitrary places from a Xen/Knoppix installation that is on a USB hard drive plugged into a variety of computers. I would like the whole filesystem to be persistent rather than just the home directory tree. This is my first post on the debian-knoppix list, so I hope that I am not out of line. I have already tried every distribution that seemed to offer anything like this, and I have read every article that I could find on the subject, but I am either too new to Linux or this exact thing hasn't yet been done in a reliable way. So far the systems that I have been most impressed with are Knoppix and Puppy because of their hardware detection and smooth wireless configuration. Puppy has some issues with dependency resolution in their package manager in the current release and I found Knoppix's wireless configuration to be a bit more polished. While both of these systems are designed for portability, my impression is that Puppy is designed more specifically to run from RAM (mission statement 2) while Knoppix seems to be a regular Debian system with portability. Since Xen is part of the Linux kernel I am hoping that it isn't at odds with the goals of Knoppix to turn it on and add some beginner friendly controls. My other goal is to make this more of a regular install of Knoppix onto a USB that retains the portability features rather than making loopback filesystems or running from an iso that has been copied to the USB. It seems that most of the USB installation options have gone for limited persistence. Why? Since I will hopefully be running virtual systems (which I understand to use a type of loopback filesystem) off of this USB disk, it seems like unnecessary overhead to nest the virtual systems inside of a giant filesystem image of the home partition. I would also like more freedom to modify the entire system from day to day. Based on my reading, I know that I am not the only person looking for a tool like this. My hope is that some of you who are more familiar with Linux/Debian/Knoppix/Xen will help me to make this a reality. My thinking is that rather than hacking this thing into existence once, we should instead make a script/program that can be included in future releases of Knoppix liveCD that will allow users to install this flavor of Knoppix onto a USB device. This script should allow the user to specify what drive to use, how large the swap should be, and whether or not the Xen features should be activated. How do I begin? Here are some links and a list of distributions that may have some insights for us. http://lists.debian.org/debian-live/2009/05/msg00022.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-live/2010/09/msg00169.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-live/2007/06/msg00250.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2008/02/msg00796.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-live/2009/04/msg00050.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-live/2007/08/msg00100.html http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Knoppix_Remastering_Howto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdahQulIcUU http://www.knoppix.net/forum/threads/28642-Remaster-Tutorial-for-Knoppix-on-USB http://www.knoppix.net/forum/threads/28447-Re-master-your-flash-installation/page2 http://www.knoppix.net/forum/threads/29312-Carrying-Full-Windows-PC-inside-USB-Flash-Disk-Via-Knoppix-NEED-A-LITTLE-HELP http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Category:Remastering_Knoppix http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/bb/viewtopic.php?t=431&sid=f757304fa0134a8bc1cc74d8722e7a4c http://featherlinux.berlios.de/remastering.html http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Bootable_USB_Key http://www.pendrivelinux.com/installing-knoppix-60-to-a-usb-flash-drive/ Kanotix
Mepis / AntiX - Citrix Xen Client - didn't boot for me Puppy / Lupu and Woof - dependency issues, but they do have full system persistence Ubuntu/Mint/Super/Pinguy - for this purpose we don't need all that software, just Xen and drivers and configuration Slax - the Plop boot loader - I need this with some old hardware Thank you Jesse |