About the Skolelinux Live Teaser CD "SkoleLive"
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Hi,
those who were on the Debian / Skolelinux Developers Meeting in Greece will
already know about it. While there I made a Skolelinux (Sarge) LiveCD.
What is special about this LiveCD is that it is not a LiveCD like Knoppix, but
a real "tjener"/sarge CD, which has just the bootup stage a little bit common
with Knoppix.
You just can look where its color and cheerful - thats the "based on Knoppix"
part. ;-)
What is also special is that its very easy to upgrade the LiveCD - either from
the LiveCD itself or from a new tjener / sarge installation.
The whole magic for this to work lies in UnionFS
(http://www.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/project-unionfs.html).
UnionFS makes it possible to overlay several directories. For example one
compressed one, which is read-only and another one, which is read-write and
for example on a ramdisk.
So you could for example also bootup a normal system, make it read-only and
lay a UnionFS on a ramdisk over it. You could then install (experimental)
packages on the system or even completely screw it up. Then you would just
reboot or reset it and all changes are undo-ed.
So with UnionFS you do not need the special magic Knoppix did, but you are
really just booting a normal 'tjener' / sarge and work with it like it was
installed on a harddisk.
The SkoleLive Teaser CD is not perfect, yet, but it pretty much separates the
base 'tjener' / sarge installation and the changes needed to a LiveCD.
Actually those changes are just:
- - Setting a root password at startup
and
- - Setting up X11 via xdebconf / dexconf before starting kdm
- - Adding a demo-user with disabled password to autologin with kdm
The LiveCD made during the workshop can be found at:
http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/skolelive/
If you do not want to download 625 MB, you can also find a much smaller base
"sarge".
There is also a template plus some scrips available to build it yourself:
http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/skolelive-template/
LiveCD making / updating has never been so easy.
To make anew CD from tjener / sarge follow the following steps:
1. Install tjener (Skolelinux server) as whatever you want (CombiServer
recommended)
Note: You need to use kernel 2.6 as the system kernel!
2. Install cloop-utils and mkisofs on tjener / sarge _or_ have some other
system on the machine (e.g. booting from a Knoppix), which has these
packages. 2 Alternatives now:
2.1 Inside tjener / sarge:
Download http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/skolelive-template/make_image and
start it. It'll make a big KNOPPIX file.
Note: Instead of installing a new sarge / tjener you can also run this command
while running from LiveCD and after you made your needed changes. (be sure to
be in /mnt or somewhere else where you have enough space)
2.2 Outside tjener / sarge:
Mount the tjener root partition to /mnt and mount all subpartitions
(e.g. /mnt/boot/). Then get and run:
http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/skolelive-template/make_image_outside
Again you'll now have a big KNOPPIX file.
Note: Making the big KNOPPIX file will take some time.
3. Download
http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/skolelive-template/skolelive-template.iso,
loop-mount it and copy it to a folder called cdrom/. Put the big
KNOPPIX-Image to cdrom/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX.
E.g. commands:
wget http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/skolelive-template/skolelive-template.iso
mkdir mnt cdrom
mount -o loop skolelive-template.iso mnt
cp -a mnt/* cdrom/
umount mnt
mv /where/is/KNOPPIX cdrom/KNOPPIX/
4. Make a new CD-ROM:
Download http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/skolelive-template/make_cdrom. Be sure
that you have it like:
# ls -la
mkcdrom
cdrom/
Then you just do: ./make_cdrom
and it creates the file skolelive.iso in the current directory.
Done.
Thats it. You have successfully updated the LiveCD.
For testing I suggest installing qemu (something like vmware, but Free
Software) and just doing:
qemu -cdrom skolelive.iso.
To change just some files, you can change cdrom/KNOPPIX/init.sh to do what you
want on bootup or just copy your to-copied files to cdrom/KNOPPIX/copy/.
The examples in there for password setting, shadow changing and X11 config
creation should be quite easy to understand.
If there are anymore questions, you can of course reach me per mail or over
one of this mailing lists.
cu
Fabian
PS: It would be possible to replace the first stage of the CD also with
debian-installer (just add cloop and unionfs udebs), but I have not looked
into it - as Knoppix is what I know best.
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