[Server-devel] Who wrote http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Install_Server?

Tue Jan 31 14:04:32 EST 2012

Jerry,

The pointers you gave were just too juicy.  I used the olpcxs-pungi.ks to
gather fc16.  The ISO was 650MB.  The ISO pungi generated wanted to do a
GUI install even though I specified "text" in the KS.cfg. But the Packages
folder did not include any Xorg stuff.

I spent time last night trying to understand the structure of the ISO that
pungi produces. It turns out that I can probably prune the ISO.  In the
images folder there's a pxeboot folder which contains initrd.img that has
the same md5sum as the initrd.img in the isolinux folder. The pxeboot
folder is more than 200MB of the total 650MB ISO and I don't suspect it
will be used in our installs.  Or . . . Maybe we should include and
configure cobbler in our core, and support pxe installs as one of the
available options to our customers.

Does it make sense to support non-PAE hardware.  When I googled PAE, it
looks like PAE came out with Pentium  Pro. (I think that means we would not
support 80286 and below). A $60 pogoplug would outperform a 286 and use
probably a 10th of the  power.

What are your thoughts about versioning XS? Martin started working on FC11,
with the thought that it might become 0.7. I think you started calling your
rebased version 1.0. Abhishek started versioning his rebase when XS was at
0.4 (now he's up to 0.4.81).

My inclination would be to let 0.7 expire without a formal release, and
start calling this initiative 0.8 (my observation is that 1.0 is often
saved for a significant change in function or stability).

I've been thinking that we need an ISO that can be written to CD, for the
early bioses that cannot boot from USB, and the early machines that don't
come with USB. But for convenience, the 4GB USB should be our install
medium of choice.

I'd like to experiment whether we can partition a 4 GB USB unto 700MB and
3300MB partitions, mark the smaller active, and then use USBmount to set up
to do a continuation of the install process after firstboot. Maybe we could
even have the squashfs look for ks.cfg on the larger partition, and
automatically use that as the kickstart specification for the initial
install.  If we can figure out how to do that we could probably put
additional repository there. So much that I don't know.  Maybe you know
something that would make this impossible...

The advantage of this scheme would be easy modification to the build
process. Would both the Australia and Nepal needs be served by such a
structure?

Thinking about facilitating a 64bit XS, the heavy lifting would be in
recompiling the XS rpms (I think).

My first ISO didn't actually boot successfully. So have some trial and
error ahead.

The biggest help you can be is to bring your knowledge to bear on my crazy
ideas.

If you have thoughts, shortcuts, code to do XS rpmbuilds, and ideas on
testing, both would be necessary, and useful.

George

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 12:03 AM, Jerry Vonau <jvonau at shaw.ca> wrote:

> On Mon, 2012-01-30 at 21:28 -0500, George Hunt wrote:
> > Thanks Jerry,
> >
> > You've done what I wanted to discuss -- split apart the xs from a bare
> > bones Fedora Core, and defer XS install until after firstboot.
>
> Well no, not really, the install is kickstart driven, usb-based with the
> XS packages installed and configured at installation time. This release
> is targeted for a single network interface, all the XS pieces are
> installed but service such as iptables and squid are left
> un-configured.
>
> > So I'll spin a FC16 iso, and try to get it ready to do a phase 2
> > install via usbmount, and maybe tftp across the network.
> >
>
> Once you have the rpms ported over it F16, having a repo on a usbkey or
> elsewhere on the net is trivial.
>
> > Do you know if there is a script that automates the rpm generation
> > from sources at dev.laptop.org?
> >
>
> Sorry I don't think there is such a beast. Martin, any input here?
>
>
> > It'll take a few days, since I'm relocating  from Calif to NYC
> > Wednesday, and have  other priority tasks.
> >
> > George
> >
>
> Let me know what you what to do, I could most likely save you a bunch of
> time.
>
> Jerry
>
>
> > On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Jerry Vonau <jvonau at shaw.ca> wrote:
> >         On Mon, 2012-01-30 at 13:05 -0600, Jerry Vonau wrote:
> >         > On Mon, 2012-01-30 at 12:40 -0500, George Hunt wrote:
> >         > > Hi everyone,
> >         > >
> >         > > I'm new to this list.
> >         > >
> >         >
> >         > Hi George:
> >         >
> >         > I'm the author of the XSAU-F11 based rework of the XS that
> >         Sridhar is
> >         > referring to.
> >         >
> >         > > I met Tony Anderson in Haiti, and again at the San
> >         Francisco OLPC
> >         > > Summit in late 2011. He prevailed upon me to spend some
> >         time trying to
> >         > > figure out how to rebase XS on a more recent Fedora Core.
> >         > >
> >         > > I just recently used pungi to gather together FC16 rpms
> >         into an iso
> >         > > using the kickstart file that came with XS-0.6.  What was
> >         550MB in FC9
> >         > > has grown to 775MB in FC16.  My initial goal was to create
> >         a CD image,
> >         > > that can be installed in the traditional way. But going
> >         forward, even
> >         > > if we can pare things down and fit in 690MB this time,
> >         perhaps we need
> >         > > a better strategy.
> >         > >
> >         >
> >         > Think some of the issue is most likely that X is being
> >         dragged in or
> >         > some extra files on the image. What is the file layout of
> >         the resulting
> >         > iso image?
> >         >
> >
> >
> >         http://dev.laptop.org/git/projects/olpc-xs-builder
> >         is the new way of using pungi for the XS, my local version is
> >         at:
> >
> https://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xs-au/repository/revisions/master/show/olpc-xs-builder/xsau-F11
> >
> >         The key is to use the olpcxs-pungi.ks file to gather the rpms
> >         and
> >         exclude what is not wanted before rolling the iso. Please have
> >         a look at
> >         build.sh for the whole routine used.
> >
> >         Jerry
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
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