Knoppix

[Chris Bier]

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Brian Kelsay wrote:
|>>>"Brian Densmore" <DensmoreB at ctbsonline.com> 08/12/04 01:22PM >>>
|>>
|>>-----Original Message-----
|>>From: Brian Kelsay
|>>
|>>An online LiveCD builder would be sweet.  I think I heard
|>> some guys were working on something like this.  I've seen a
|>> couple of websites that build a custom firewall floppy.  If
|>> you had a full Debian mirror available and have the web app
|>>add the selected programs to a group that is in turn fed to
|>> cloop to compress and then fed to mkisofs, then have it save
|>> to a new directory that has your name from the online form,
|>> then email you when it was done with the path to the new iso.
|>>Any of you programmers want to take this on?
|>>Could Java do this?  I think so.  Or a php or python script.
|>> Making the user interface would probably be the hardest part.
|
|
|>I've got a few ideas on this. I was thinking, of building a page where
|>users select several types of things. Like:
|>+----- Desktop ----------------------+
|>| [] I want a lightweight desktop   |
|>| [] I want a fullblown desktop      |
|>| [] I want no desktop                   |
|>+--------------------------------------+
|>etc.
|>
|>Then I could have a couple of premade iso directories and also some
|>"package groups" of certain apps. Then when the user has selected
|>all of the families they want I could add to the basic iso with the custom
|>apps. I'm not sure you can actually add to an iso or not. But then
|>you could have a small group of premade iso's and rather quickly build
|>complete isos. Of course, you would also want to have an "expert let me
|>pick everything" option. Which of course you'd want to build a drop down
|>list based on standard categories (net,core,multimedia,X,etc.)
|
|
| In a script, you will most likely not want unpack and repack an iso
image (too much time and CPU).   I like the idea of the  base images
(that's what Morphix does).  Now you would want the list of apps in
those premade iso files to be editable by the user choice portion of the
program and build the iso from scratch.  This would help to build the
iso from the latest version of each app in the repository, unless you
wanted the packages to stay frozen for some reason.  Each category would
add preselected packages to the list and then the user expert mode would
edit the final list.  I wonder if dependencies would still be met in
this fashion.  You will probably want to tie in to dpkg or apt with your
script.  Look at how the current Debian Net installer works.  It doesn't
build an ISO on the fly, but allows the lang. choice and package choice.
  maybe you just need to add the ISO creation to the end of that rather
than have it install to HDD and remove their GUI front-end for a w!
|  eb-based one.  Or tie-in to theirs with the web front-end if
possible.   The Progeny kickstart project might be another avenue.  They
have been altering the Redhat mass installer to work w/ .debs and a
Debian system.  Kickstart is basically scripting for repetitive,
duplicate installs.

This could be an interesting project for the LUG.  However, we might
consider just making a nice script interface that people can use (a la
jigdo, but easier to use) that will build the iso on their machine.
Building it and downloading it from the server would eat a lot of
resources and bandwidth.

Chris
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