Outmoding CDs (LiveCD)

[Tollef Fog Heen]

* John Richard Moser 

| Tollef Fog Heen wrote:
| > * John Richard Moser 
| > 
| > | The basic installation would be as follows:
| > |
| > |  - Warn user that the selected USB drive will be -erased-
| > |  - Allot one partition the size of the SquashFS image
| > 
| > Not needed, the squashfs can be on a VFAT partition.
| > 
| > |  - Allot 50-100 MB for /boot
| > 
| > Not needed.
|
| /boot is going to be changing a lot, and it's not going to be on the
| real / device (it'll be on a unionfs overlay), it needs to be somewhere.

Unless you're talking about using persistent live cds for development
snapshots, /boot is totally irrelevant.  You just want to get the
kernel and initrd out of there and onto the vfat partition so syslinux
can find them.

| the layout of the disk will basically be:
|
| [VFAT (windows sees this)][SQUASHFS (live root)][overlay (changes)]

Why do you want squashfs and the overlay to be in a separate
partition?

| The standard casper initrd uses tmpfs to back the squashfs / with
| changes.

... unless you tell it to be persistent, in which case it looks for a
suitable device.

| Our changes are going to be persistent.  When I install things, and
| reboot, they stay installed.

I was the one who implemented persistency in casper.  I think I know
what it means. ;-)

| > |  - Install kernels to /boot
| > 
| > The standard kernel from the live cd can be used.
| > 
|
| And when you apt-get upgrade and a new kernel is out?

Then you put the new kernel and initrd on the USB stick.  I wouldn't
recommend running random apt-get upgrades on such a system, but would
rather recommend replacing the squashfs image to «upgrade».

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen                                                        ,''`.
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are      : :' :
                                                                      `. `' 
                                                                        `-