LiveCDDesign

current livecd is based on minifo

Advantages

  • each module mounts as an overlay of the previous
  • no requirement for ramdisks and symlinks etc.

Issues

  • mini-fo is _BUGGY_.
  • complex
  • maintenance
  • divergence (hardware detection)
  • different kernel
  • different X
  • limited architecture support
  • rsyncablity

New design (for hoary):

writable ( mini-fo )

  • -> device mapper snapshots

    • copy on write at block level

compression ( cloop )

  • -> want to use cloop

    • currently doesn't play well with device mapper (wrong blocks, corruption, badness)

hardware detection ( knoppix )

  • -> switch to hotplug

build system ( morphix )

  • -> debian-installer & custom bits

    • need to better handle netcfg w/o dhcp issues.
  • other architecture support comes for (hopefully) free.
    • addressed by debian-installer

kernel ( 2.6.7+patches vs 2.6.8.1 )

  • -> unifying: add cloop to stock kernel.

X ( mkxf86conf )

  • Xorg config ubuntu packages (using debconf)

New Fun Stuff

  • persistant data (use a persistant device for COW)
  • arbitrary storage ("it's a block device")
  • debian-installer customization
  • combined liveCD and install media

Misc notes

SquashFS is a read-only filesystem, which violates the design criteria.

From Juanje Tue Apr 5 14:06:42 +0100 2005 From: Juanje Date: Tue, 05 Apr 2005 14:06:42 +0100 Subject: Squashfs, ro, and so on Message-ID: <20050405140642+0100@https://www.ubuntulinux.org>

Current System:

ext3 image (rw) + cloop (ro) = cloop image (ro)

cloop image (ro) + blocks dev (rw) + device mapper snapshots = semi-rw filesystem

Proposal:

Squashfs (ro) + dir (rw) + unionfs = semi-rw filesystem

Reasons:

Cloop = Buggy, slow, inefficient

Squashfs = Stable, fast, very efficient, it suports more architectures

Unionfs extras = you can mount directories, it's no necessary to be a bloks dev. That open a lot of posibilities more than with just blocks devices'

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LiveCDDesign (last edited 2008-08-06 16:14:33 by localhost)