Knoppix

[Brian Densmore]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brian Kelsay 
> 
> So you could have your server pull from the major Debian 
> round-robin mirror list.  Unless this is not kosher.  You 
Do you mean for jigdo, or when a user is building an iso?
I'm not totally sure jigdo does this, but it looks like it could.
If not, I'm sure it could be modified to do this.

> ...
> In your second paragraph, did you mean that the tiny bootable 
> ISO that is created, 
> will have a firsttime script that grabs the user selected 
> packages from the net and not from "the user's machine"?
Right, the tiny bootable installer would have the list of applications 
for the installer script. When that iso is booted, it will pull down
the software from Debian mirrors. Another nice thing about this is,
we could run a netselect first off in the install and build a list of 
fastest mirrors for that location.

> 
> How about if the web interface you build, grabs the files 
> from the mirrors and builds on the user's machine?  You would 
> have to have mkisofs in Java or other format to be able to 
> run that on their machine if they don't have it.  Unless 
> Jigdo will do it.
This is what jigdo does, it makes the iso on the user's machine. 
It even does it in windows.

> I'm just throwing out ideas.  I kind of like the alternative 
> idea of the web app building a small ISO that has a package 
> list/install script built by the web app,  that when the ISO 
> is ran on the target PC will grab the files from the net.  It 
> would then give you your auto install on multiple machines.  
> Building the ISO would not take long and would allow the user 
> time to think about the questions that the standard Debian 
> installer gives you.  It would be more flexible, allowing you 
Right, this approach is great for building an iso to do a network
install from. We could even give the users the option of using
their own "mirror" to fetch from. The only thing I don't like about
this approach is we couldn't build a live-cd this way. I'd like to
give the users a chance to build a live cd. So maybe a combined
approach would be best. We give them two choices: build a 
jigdo CD/DVD, or build a download install CD. I really like the 
idea of having a download install cd, because it would actually build
a minimal Debian system. Just a core system, not very useful but
fully functional. It would be a simple matter of using one of the 
current distros for this as a base, like one of the firewall distros. 
Like Bering.

Brian Densmore