USB install with portability, persistence, and Xen with a GUI
This is a REPOST with (hopefully) improved formatting.
Klaus,
>Maybe there is a misunderstanding here. The "persistent overlay" is not
>just the home directory. Rather it is an overlay over all system
>directories that stores changes vs. the origianl read-only medium.
>With the persistent overlay, you can change everything in the system,
>install new software, change global configurations.
Yes, I didn't realize that was the case. This is workable, but I
wonder why it is done that was on a USB HDD.? Is this just a hold over
from the live CDs which for the most part are not writable?
>the formatting of your mail is somewhat difficult
>to read for me.
I was trying to manually word wrap to 80 columns per the instructions
here: http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct Is this
necessary? I havn't found an easy way to do this automatically with my
web based email client (hotmail) yet.
>What is the "exact thing"? The overlay is quite common in various live
>distros.
The exact thing is a USB install with good hardware detection and
drivers that does not use the overlay FS but does have persistence.
The exact thing also has a 32 bit compatible Xen kernel or some other
virtualization technology with a user friendly GUI. The exact
proposition is that anyone who is interested in making such a thing
would help me to make scripts and a GUI for Knoppix that will assist
anyone in making the exact thing. Perhaps the exact thing should be
given a working title such as PPK+VM, and the project could be called
PPK+VM builder.
> Why Xen and not KVM? Personal preference?
My understanding is that Xen operates closer to the hardware than KVM.
You have a valid point about it being a question of personal
preference. This article is interesting.
http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/feature/Xen-vs-KVM-Linux-virtualization-hypervisors
. ;
I didn't realize that Xen was only in the 64bit release of Knoppix.
That is actually a no go for me because all of my hardware is old.
Another question that comes to mind while we are discussing kernels is
whether or not the Xen kernel has the same portability (driver support
and hardware recognition) as the Knoppix kernel.? It may be that KVM
is a better choice.
> I do not think that they are "leading" at all. Rather, they make things
> more difficult than they should be, by using nonstandard, undocumented,
> patented and artificially restricted formats. I'd rather like to have
> multimedia content that I can play everywhere without needing such a
> restricted, proprietary player.
While I agree with you, the reality is that proprietary players exist
and things like Netflix, Xbox games, and smart-phone apps are
attractive to users and vendors today. In the end everything may be
open, but the war (if it is a war) isn't going to be won by
inconveniencing users. Although computers conveniently come with
operating systems such as MS Windows OS, Apple OS, and Google Chrome
OS, I have not said that people should refrain from installing an
alternative OS onto a systems internal drive. I do think that any OS
including Linux, BSD, or Hurd that is not portable is better suited
for entertainment than work because it is less maintainable and the
hardware will eventually make it obsolete. This can be acceptable in
some cases such as the case of a cluster of systems, perhaps based on
Puppy Linux, where the individual nodes do not need to be secure, or
in the case of a computer installation that is not networked (such as
an industrial machine) or that has a function
requiring minimal security (such as a jukebox).
> FAT64??
Sorry, I was thinking of ExFAT.
>You seem to assume that Knoppix should do something different than it
>does now, in order to be able to start Xen.
> Well, then, why not just go for it? :-)
I want to. My theoretical understanding of the problem is pretty well
developed, but my practical experience is lacking. I'm basically out
of my depth; so I am trying to bring in some help. At this point I
don't quite know what everything does, and the size of even a small
distribution such as DamnSmallLinux is a pretty big thing to wrap my
head around all at once. The immediate sticking point for me is
getting persistence to work on my USB install of Knoppix. Although the
Knoppix on USB that results form the program in the Knoppix menu
designed for that purpose does run, it is not persistent. As it stands
it operates exactly like a CD. I read somewhere that I need to press a
key at a certain time in the boot process every time I want to use
persistence. I havn't seen the prompts for this yet, and I would
rather not be tethered to the keyboard everytime I boot.
>A script usually is meant to do something automatically without user
>interaction. Or are you rather asking for a GUI?
If we are talking about the proposed PPK+VM builder then it could
start as a command line script with all of the options provided as
arguments. After that it would be a trivial matter to build a GUI and
add it to the Knoppix menu.I think it would also be convenient if
Knoppix included some kind of a GUI for whatever VM is used for
PPK+VM.
> Btw, what was your question?
The second post was a reply to a question that I received by a private
message. I posted the answer because I surmised that others may have
been wondering about the same things. In my first post, I am basically
stating my objective and asking for help getting from here to there.
How do you recommend that I proceed?
Thank you for taking the time to respond.
Jesse
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