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GrimIx - 2.6 Debian LiveCD/Installer

Started by William Grim, 2004-10-23T04:52:44-05:00 (Saturday)

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William Grim

Despite lack of creativity on my part, I have decided to create a debian-based livecd with the name, GrimIx, based on my last name.

Anyway, I have need to install Debian systems with 2.6 kernels instead of 2.4... 2.6 supports my wifi, while 2.4 does not.  Also, 2.6 has SELinux patches, while 2.4 does not have that unless patched.  There are other reasons I wish to have 2.6 in an initial Debian install as well.

So, I'm getting close to having a workable, albeit no installer interface (yet), livecd (all console based... I don't use GUIs on most systems).  I'd appreciate it if people could test it... maybe give some feedback or make small contributions in the way of making the install easier.  If you do make contributions in the way of install scripts, I do have one caveat, though; I'd much rather have shell scripts (/bin/sh) over python or perl, because I'd rather not have an install system dependent upon large software systems that may change at any time.

The ISO will be available at http://snow.cs.siue.edu/~unix/grimix/grimix.iso.  You are free to download it now and try it, but it will fail to work until I create an initrd and base file system hierarchy for it.  So, basically, I don't recommend trying it until I say it's "safe" to do so.  Right now I'm waiting for the kernel modules to all compile so I can make the initrd.

Well, cheers!
William Grim
IT Associate, Morgan Stanley

Stiffler

I would like to try out the CD. I love the 2.6 series kernel, and I thought that Debian should have a 2.6 LiveCD and have been missing out by not having one (I say that even though I use Gentoo, but I still like Debian and all the other Linuxes). One question though, is it a stock vanilla kernel, or are there patches applied?

I know you are not too fond of Window Managers, but Ratpoison might be a good one to have on a LiveCD. It basically is a bunch of terminals on one screen, and that might be helpful to see several config files side-by-side. See Screenshot 1 and Screenshot 2.

Good luck, and I hope to get a chance to test it soon.

Jon
Retired webmaster of CAOS.

William Grim

Well, the idea behind the LiveCD is not to have a GUI.  It's just to get a system installed and then allow you to install your own software after that.  I think fvwm would be my first choice if I did put a GUI on there, which I doubt I will.  XFree86 uses too much space, and if I have a livecd, I'd rather do something useful with the space than use it on prettiness.

The kernel, though, is an unpatched 2.6 kernel.  However, I do plan to apply openmosix CVS patches to it if it is stable enough.  One other thing I'd like to do with this CD is make it easy to add debian "heavy" nodes to an openmosix cluster.  When I say heavy, I mean they're nodes that can act as a slave-master and not just be a network boot slave.
William Grim
IT Associate, Morgan Stanley

Peter Motyka

SIUE CS Alumni 2002
Grad Student, Regis University
Senior Engineer, Ping Identity
http://motyka.org