[Server-devel] Customizing build 703 for mass deployment

[Michael Stone]

Bryan,

> not very elegant. Would like a better solution but time is short.

I've already suggested three more elegant mechanisms:

  * tarball -> edit -> mkfs.jffs2, 

  * bootUSB -> edit -> savenand, and

  * puritan.

> We don't expect the kids to run olpc-update do we? Running OLPC-Update
> on 170 XO's would be a headache for me to do manually. Also, I would
> have to set up my olpc-update server here in Kathmandu because we don't
> have the international bandwidth to update against servers in the US

I don't really have expectations one way or the other. (Incidentally,
update-servers are just rsync servers with some special modules. The 1cc
version is fancy because it loads builds on demand and caches them.)

> Anna Schoolfield of the Birmingham School District has asked me how to
> customize an xo image. Lacking a more elegant method, I will have to
> point her to my current one. 

I'm rapidly starting to think that we ought to refine the 

  * tarball -> edit -> mkfs.jffs2   
  
into a 

  clone -> hack -> publish -> export-to-jffs2

workflow. After all - what's really gained by rebuilding images from
packages each time you want to make a change? 

(Don't get me wrong - packages should still be the default method for
hacking. I just see no reason to _require_ people to rebuild the
filesystem tree from scratch every time they need to change it.)

Michael