Slimmed Down Fedora 10 on XO (was Fedora 10 on XO)

[Bobby Powers]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 12:27 PM, Erik Garrison <erik at laptop.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 04:42:48PM -0500, Greg Smith wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > Thanks for all the feedback on my questions about what it would take to
> > run a slimmed down Fedora 10 on the XO NAND.
> >
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2008-December/msg00022.html
> >
> > To reiterate, the goal is one distribution with two Desktop Environments
> > (Sugar and one "standard" one).
>
> What of the case where all the functionality of Sugar can be replicated
> using a properly-configured standard desktop environment?  (Strawman
> this sentence may be, but I think we should be open to this option
> moving forward.)
>
> > I think the main work now is to pick the minimal package list that we
> > need and will fit on the XO NAND.
>
> This is *the* work of making builds.
>
> > Can anyone get a slimmed down Fedora 10 with window manager running on
> > an XO?
>
> Yes.  I have a build tool which does so.  See:
>
>    http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/erik/rpmxo;a=summary
>
> or just:
>
>    git clone git://dev.laptop.org/users/erik/rpmxo
>
> The build tool depends on the current development version of rinse, a
> rpm bootstrapping utility.  For our testing purposes I have included a
> copy of the rinse mercurial repository in that git tree
> (http://rinse.repository.steve.org.uk/).
>
> Then install rinse by following the instructions in the
> rinse.repository.steve.org.uk directory in the rpmxo repo created by the
> above git command.  You will need perl, rpm, and wget (note the
> dependencies listed at http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/rinse).
> Rinse manages a variety of common issues encountered when build and
> re-building images, such as caching rpms, bootstrapping yum, and running
> post-install scripts.  It does so in a relatively platform-independent
> manner.  The author and I have been working together to update the
> system for Fedora 10 and to increase its configurability.  (Please note
> that I have submitted changes to the author's repo which may not yet be
> reflected in a fresh clone, this is why I have temporarily added the
> repository to the rpmxo git tree.)
>
> To run the build script do:
>
>    sudo ./initchroot.sh
>
>  ... in the rpmxo git repository directory yielded by the git clone
> command above.
>
> By default this will make f10.root.  Then generate an image to flash
> onto an unsecured laptop by using:
>
>    sudo ./mkjffs2.sh fc10.root fc10.img
>
> This will create the .crc and .img files which are required for OFW to
> flash the image onto the laptop.  Putting these on a USB key and typing:
>
>    copy-nand u:\fc10.img
>
>  ... at the OFW prompt on an XO will flash the system onto the internal
> NAND.  Rebooting should yield a prompt
>
> This procedure is still in alpha.  Interested parties should test and
> immediately inform me of any issues encountered.
>
>
> > The hard part will come when we need to pick the bare minimum set of
> > functionality. I especially want to know what additional
> > libraries/RPMs/features we need to install beyond what we alrady have in
> >   XO 8.2.0.
>
> I have been quite frustrated with the Fedora toolset in this regard.
> Getting a bare minimum of functionality is not something which these
> tools are typically used to do.  The experience of building a Fedora
> system from 'scratch' contrasts starkly with what we find in Debian,
> where debootstrapping is a common development pattern which is
> well-supported by the community.
>
> It can be done, and I am going to seek as much help from the Fedora
> community in doing so as possible.  It just isn't easy and I have felt
> like there are a lot of problems in using Fedora in this fashion which
> will have to be resolved to make it easy for deployments to use such a
> build script.
>
> (I sincerely hope someone flames me here as any attention to this issue
> is good attention.)


sure :) why aren't you building off mstone's work on Puritan?  It seems like
a lot of duplication of effort; unless I'm missing something, the biggest
difference seems to be that yours may be more debian-like.

Bobby


> Erik
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