LargerLivefs

Revision 7 as of 2006-06-22 17:25:11

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Summary

As of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, an identical live filesystem is used on Ubuntu DVDs and CDs. Since space on the CD is limited, this filesystem omits translations and language support infrastructure for many languages. These packages should be available on the DVD, where more space is available.

Note that the casper side of this will Just Work when https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/live-cd-stacked-filesystems is done.

Rationale

Some less-used languages have users too. They should be able to use the live DVD in their native tongue without having to resort to custom live CDs or similar solutions.

Use cases

  • Peter is a Swedish user who would like to try Ubuntu. Since Swedish isn't a common enough language to make it onto the install CDs, he downloads the live DVD and tries out Ubuntu in Swedish.

Scope

Affects the live filesystem and live ISO build process.

Design

Make livecd.sh build stacked file systems by mounting the previously built file systems and then installing the new set of packages. We will need a live-dvd seed or something similar to decide what goes onto the live DVD filesystem.

Implementation

livecd.sh needs to build the language pack/DVD live fs on top of the regular squashfs and make that available beside the regular livefs.

The ISO building process currently wgets the live filesystem image from the buildd for each architecture, and places them in /casper/filesystem.squashfs on the ISO image. Following LiveCDStackedFileSystem, it will be changed to wget base, desktop, and live stacked filesystems, and place them in numerically-prefixed files under /casper, e.g. /casper/05base.squashfs, /casper/10desktop.squashfs, and /casper/15live.squashfs. To deal with this specification, it will be changed for DVD builds to wget the language pack filesystem image as well and place it in e.g. /casper/20langpacks.squashfs on the ISO image. If no language pack filesystem image is available, it will degrade to using only the normal live filesystem images.

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