[gentoo-soc] Re: GSoc 2009 : Making the cluster LiveCD bootable from USB

[Tom Stellard]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 7:18 AM, Eric Thibodeau <kyron@××××××××.com> wrote:
> In response to two e-mails I just got off list from Meetanshu Gupta  and
> Ajith Kamath, in both cases the impression is that the project is simply to
> port the bootable CD to USB disk. Here is are some clarifications:
>
> - The wiki's¹ description is misleading, booting to USB was ONE of my
> suggestions with a little more details here². Quite frankly, porting to USB
> should be somewhat trivial. The hardest part is to being very methodical and
> making sure the process can be reproduced using, ideally, Catalyst and
> little outside scripting. All of this also implies getting the catalyst
> specs up to date, modifying/removing many hacks that would no longer be
> required for a USB based boot (since we would now have an RW system). ***
> root on JFFS2 might be of interest here ***... and so on.
>

Is the idea that booting from a USB device would be added as an option
when building the liveCD image, or is booting from a USB device
supposed to replace booting from a CD?

> - AuFS is used as an overlay system and is required for the NFS-booted
> nodes. One might want to migrate that to a less efficient tmpfs approach
> (ref: LTSP implementation as being done under Gentoo too).
> - Change most of the scripts to use dialog and automate some detection/ask
> questions as per what was discovered.
> - ... and so on, the idea would be to implement my original proposal and
> push it further. I do have it but want some feedback before I dig it out and
> re-post it (Donnie, thought you had posted it as an example? If not so, feel
> free to do so if it's still relevant.)

I have been working on building the liveCD the last few days, and I am
almost finished.  I have run into many problems along the way, and I
have come up with a few general ideas for things to include in my
proposal:

-Add spec files for x86.
-Update the hpc-clustering and nfsroot profiles and the catalyst spec files.
-Simplify and automate the build process with a configuration script.
-Add documentation for building the liveCD using the new configuration script.

These tasks all involve the build process, and once they have been
completed, work could begin on USB booting, JFFS2 or other areas of
interest.

It seems like a lot of work has been done to make sure the right
packages are included in the build, and that currently the biggest
challenge is updating the build process and making it easy to
duplicate.  Will improving the build process, USB booting and the
related file system changes be enough work for one summer, or are
there other parts of the cluster liveCD that Gentoo developers would
like to see improved?

-Tom Stellard