Knoppix

[Brian Densmore]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Bier
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Brian Kelsay wrote:
> |>>>"Brian Densmore"  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
> |>> ...
> |>>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'd be willing to tackle some of this. I think PHP would be a good choice
for the front end.

> ...| 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 too bad. It would have been sweet to just be able to append to an iso.
Of course we could still have a small selection of "prepackaged isos"
for people who don't want to make any choices. The system could rebuild the isos
on a daily basis so that they don't get too stale.
Basically, I'm thinking a minimalist desktop, a server, a barebones, a full-desktop
(2-4 isos).
That'd be about 3-4.5GB of disk, on top of keeping a full depository of debian.

> 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.  
That's an excellent suggestion. A pop up could be generated if a user selects/
deselects something that has dependencies.

> 
> 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.
This is an interesting idea. Never used jigdo, so that's not much help to me. 
I didn't realize that a full debian archive is 100GB. I'd thought of building
a server for it. Now, I'm not as sure of what the system requirements would be
for such a beast. But, I'd still be willing to host it and build a box.
Jigdo does look very useful. I think that might be an excellent idea, especially
as users may want to install everything. I'm not sure I'm prepared to spring
for a terabyte server. To hold all the isos. ;')

I had also thought about building a tiny iso on the fly, that has the selected
list of apps and a small debian distro with a simple install routine and a 
"firsttime" script that then downloads from the user's machine and installs 
the rest of the apps.

It's also nice to see jigdo has a version for windows.

Brian