-- Greg Freemyer On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 12:26 PM, zsoltpeterbasak wrote:

Hello everyone!

This week I spent my time with crafting my scripts and making the boot pretty. Pretty as in, work normally. Because so far I used a trick (rd.break, anyone?) to get things up. Taming Dracut is not the easiest thing, if you have no former experience doing so.

But I managed to dig through all the modules scripts now (literally, all of them), and now I'm working on the correct way of injecting our system into it.

A bulleted list with a somewhat accurate timeline: - Made a quick blog, so my mentor can follow my progress much easier. It's also good for me to backtrack my process a lot easier. - Fixed up the CLF system script, so it mounts up 'modules'. Basically squashfs files, which can contain software, or modules, for example. Currently it's used to update the image's modules. - Fixed up the scripts so they would chainload perfectly. The system gets mounted flawless after the user selects his image of choice. - Learned a ton about Dracut again. One such thing was it's conf and switches. How they behave. - Spent a ton of time with pivot_root, switch_root and the like (manual mount). Because pivot_root and switch_root would fail miserably at boot. Michal (my mentor) had a great idea. The default mount point and a clean exit booted up the new system. This took me to the right track. - 'exec' fooled me great at debugging. ;_; - Learned how to use expect, where to execute it. Not sure if we will need it in the final version without breaks... But expect is so powerful, it may come in handy later on. - Debugging, debugging, debugging.

So CLF is at the stage where automagic is being worked on. Mount is done = booting, working system. I need to add syslinux to the equation and it's a thing people could already install on a pendrive.

(Of course, we are far from the final goals, as there are so many things I could improve, and so many things I could implement, even if the basics are done. Which is not the case at the moment, so yeah.)

Thanks to the quickblog, expect lenghtier reports from now on. (I did work a lot before as well, but I just summed things up real fast each week.)

Regards, Peter

Peter, It sounds like you are making real progress. That's great. I expect to be one of the beneficiaries of your work. (I booted about 20 PCs from live media last week. It was a big project and I had to have various DVDs on hand to ensure I could find one that worked. I actually used at least 4 different live images.) I remember the initial goals, but now you've got a handle on things can you give us an update as to the current end of summer goals? ie. Should we be able to have multiple live images on a single thumb? Should the live images have to come from somewhere specific? Suse Studio? Can we have Ubuntu / Fedora / openSUSE all on one boot thumb? If so, can they be existing downloadable ISOs or do the ISOs have to be custom built? On the final thumb, will openSUSE even be required? Or can the ISOs be exclusively other distros. Any chance of support for non-linux distros like Win PE. Thanks Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Sat, Jun 28, 2014 at 2:34 AM, zsoltpeterbasak wrote:

Hello Greg!

It's good to see that someone is already interested in the project. :) So, to answer your questions...

...

Should we be able to have multiple live images on a single thumb?

Yes, that was the original plan.

...

Peristent storage (not asked, just part of it)

Basically a batch of image files will be in one place on the drive, and you can boot whichever you like. Persistent changes is also in, so my rough idea is that each entry will have like 3 sub-entries. (boot without persistent changes, boot with changes, boot and create new changes file)

So far this got a rough check, and it worked. But first I have to make a real drive to boot up and figure out the quirks of this. So no promise.

But booting multiple images is 100% yes.

That in and of itself is very cool. So if I create a firewall or router or other appliance, I can boot it to a state that uses the persistent changes, or I can boot it to the as original condition. That alone is a very cool feature.

...

Should the live images have to come from somewhere specific? Suse Studio?

Suse Studio was and is an original goal, so that will be supported.

Again, very cool.

Other images... it depends. When the layout is done, I will start working on Suse Studio images. When that's done, check other images as well. (The idea is to implement the necessary logic in the scripts, so they can deal with different images.)

...

Can we have Ubuntu / Fedora / openSUSE all on one boot thumb?

Yes (prev. answer). openSUSE lives are booting. Haven't tested Fedora, but it's my first suspect, that it will boot without any extra scripting. Ubuntu looked like a bit tougher task, but we will see what time allows. (I don't want to stop working on the project when GSoC ends, just want to reach the proposal/project goals until then.)

...

If so, can they be existing downloadable ISOs or do the ISOs have to

be custom built?

Existing images. But of course, you can modify those, pack them back, and boot those. Or use the Studio.

Even better. There are several ISO images I keep around for booting live images. Having them all on one thumb would be great and simplify my life.

...

On the final thumb, will openSUSE even be required? Or can the ISOs be exclusively other distros.

It's not a requirement, like having an openSUSE ISO lying around. ( We can feature openSUSE logo for the boot menu or whatsoever, so that's free advertising. :) )

...

Any chance of support for non-linux distros like Win PE.

Phew. Uhm... I will have to check that later on.

That was more a curiosity. I probably should have a Win PE in my arsenal of ISO's I keep handy, but I don't currently.

The reason I'm so unsure about features is because I spent a fraction of time on that. (Like actually booting the images, checking persistent storage and the like. That set of things.) The another part of time spent is debugging/working on each step from boot to the scripts. ^ Which can be a huuuge timesink.

Don't let me distract you. I just wanted to get a sense of where the project was headed.

So uhm, yeah. Will keep tracking progress and report more verbose, so you can track progress as well with the reports. And it's still no.1 target for me to have an image which people can play with. As soon as possible.

Thanks for the feedback. Greg

Regards, Peter

Greg Freemyer wrote:

...

-- Greg Freemyer

On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 12:26 PM, zsoltpeterbasak wrote:

...

Hello everyone!

This week I spent my time with crafting my scripts and making the boot pretty. Pretty as in, work normally. Because so far I used a trick (rd.break, anyone?) to get things up. Taming Dracut is not the easiest thing, if you have no former experience doing so.

But I managed to dig through all the modules scripts now (literally, all of them), and now I'm working on the correct way of injecting our system into it.

A bulleted list with a somewhat accurate timeline: - Made a quick blog, so my mentor can follow my progress much easier. It's also good for me to backtrack my process a lot easier. - Fixed up the CLF system script, so it mounts up 'modules'. Basically squashfs files, which can contain software, or modules, for example. Currently it's used to update the image's modules. - Fixed up the scripts so they would chainload perfectly. The system gets mounted flawless after the user selects his image of choice. - Learned a ton about Dracut again. One such thing was it's conf and switches. How they behave. - Spent a ton of time with pivot_root, switch_root and the like (manual mount). Because pivot_root and switch_root would fail miserably at boot. Michal (my mentor) had a great idea. The default mount point and a clean exit booted up the new system. This took me to the right track. - 'exec' fooled me great at debugging. ;_; - Learned how to use expect, where to execute it. Not sure if we will need it in the final version without breaks... But expect is so powerful, it may come in handy later on. - Debugging, debugging, debugging.

So CLF is at the stage where automagic is being worked on. Mount is done = booting, working system. I need to add syslinux to the equation and it's a thing people could already install on a pendrive.

(Of course, we are far from the final goals, as there are so many things I could improve, and so many things I could implement, even if the basics are done. Which is not the case at the moment, so yeah.)

Thanks to the quickblog, expect lenghtier reports from now on. (I did work a lot before as well, but I just summed things up real fast each week.)

Regards, Peter

Peter,

It sounds like you are making real progress. That's great. I expect to be one of the beneficiaries of your work. (I booted about 20 PCs from live media last week. It was a big project and I had to have various DVDs on hand to ensure I could find one that worked. I actually used at least 4 different live images.)

I remember the initial goals, but now you've got a handle on things can you give us an update as to the current end of summer goals?

ie. Should we be able to have multiple live images on a single thumb?

Should the live images have to come from somewhere specific? Suse Studio?

Can we have Ubuntu / Fedora / openSUSE all on one boot thumb?

If so, can they be existing downloadable ISOs or do the ISOs have to be custom built?

On the final thumb, will openSUSE even be required? Or can the ISOs be exclusively other distros.

Any chance of support for non-linux distros like Win PE.

Thanks Greg

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Sorry! :) I will edit the title for the next (current week's) report. And thanks. Feels good to have so many people interested. Project looks great (really does). But I will save up the interesting bits for the report. ;) jdd wrote:

just a small thing: you should add on the subject line "flash drive" in place of just "flash". Until now I was reading this as flash video reader :-(

and I'm very interested by your work, making demos very often, being able to have multiple isos on only one usb device is great!

jdd

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org