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Archiv für May, 2010

Booting LessLinux via network

Monday, May 31st, 2010

As mentioned previously, support for netbooting LessLinux was recently introduced. In builds from 20100528-000000 it works stable and can be used in production environments. So please test the new function with this build:

Currently for netbooting a DHCP and PXE server are required, a HTTP daemon should be present, although it is possible to load the ISO directly from download.lesslinux.org. For now the ISO is completely stored in volatile memory — future versions will probably also allow NFS access. To load an ISO via HTTP just one additional parameter is necessary: (more…)

Accessing LessLinux with VNC

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

As I mentioned before, “LessLinux Search and Rescue” is intended to be a versatile live system for typical service jobs that have to be done in mixed environments. To make work easier, a service system should be net-bootable and accessible with a remote desktop application. In builds starting with timestamps after 20100526-000000 I included support for both functions:

  • Booting the kernel and initramfs with PXE and loading the system ISO with wget by http or ftp
  • Starting the desktop with Xvnc instead a local X server

(more…)

Do it yourself: Build stage03

Friday, May 7th, 2010

In the third stage the final ISO image is assembled. To assemble the ISO you need an overlay with some fixes and the bootloader configuration. Eventually the bootloader configuration can be automatically generated – but not for now. Since assembling stage03 is basically calculating dependencies, copying files from the chroot environment, compressing the squashfs containers and finalizing the ISO image, this stage is usually done in 20 to 40 minutes. (more…)

Do it yourself: Build stage01 and stage02

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

I recently assembled the build script to compile a completely free and open version of the Rescue System that started life as “Computerbild Notfall-CD 2.0”. The free version is dubbed “LessLinux Search and Rescue” and can be easily modified to build your own derivates. In the next three days I will guide you through the whole build process (kind of real time).

Currently the only supported build environment is VMware, this means you must have either VMware Workstation, VMware Player (Win, Linux) or VMware Fusion (Mac OS X) installed. Player is sufficient, since the build environments are considered as some kind of “disposable environment”. Note that the VMware image expands to up to 80GB, to prevent fragmentation and reach best performance you might want to put it on a separate partition. (more…)