Deployment image customization

[pgf at laptop.org]

daniel wrote:
 > On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 8:08 PM,  <pgf at laptop.org> wrote:
 > > ssh host keys are probably generated on first boot as well.
 > >
 > > with partitioning support, it should be possible to have a r.o. root
 > > overlaid by a unionfs writeable mount, so machine-specific changes
 > > don't modify the released partition.  this would make cloning quite a
 > > bit easier, i'd think.  i have no idea what the performance hit of
 > > a unionfs setup would be, nor how such a partitioning would fit
 > > into the rest of the update strategy (e.g.  olpc-update).
 > 
 > unionfs isn't upstream and was quite unreliable last time I use it.
 > And it adds the challenge of differentiating state that must be
 > discarded for the cloned image, and state that must not be.
 > 
 > For example, we would want to ssh keys generated during first boot to
 > *not* be included in the clonable image, that's obvious. But if the
 > user boots the OLPC image, goes into the control panel and sets a
 > language, then we *do* want that language change to be included in the
 > clonable image that is the output of the process.
 > 
 > How would the system differentiate between those two?

i dunno.  i guess the lead engineer on the project would have to
decide.  :-)

paul
=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at laptop.org
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