Place(s) to discuss mirroring?
by Marc Herbert
Hi,
Like I guess a number of people here, I maintain some internal mirrors
of Fedora (and others)
What would be the best mailing-list(s)/forum(s) to discuss topics like:
mirror consistency while updating, hard linking RPMs to save space, etc.?
Thanks in advance.
Marc
14 years, 1 month
Preventing access to /mnt/live (inter alia)
by James Heather
Hi all,
What I'm trying to do is to create a bunch of Fedora USB sticks for use
in practical examinations at uni. The existing Windows setup in the labs
is pretty woeful, and the only way I can be in control of the
environment is to boot up off something else.
I have it working pretty nicely, but I have a few issues I'm not sure
how to resolve.
(1) I want to stop non-root users from being able to mount other drives,
e.g., other USB sticks. How do I do that? (It's not enough to kill off
the auto-mounting if people will still be able to mount from the command
line.)
(2) On a more relevant point for this list, I've noticed that all users
have access to the base FAT32 filesystem of the bootable USB stick,
on /mnt/live. How do I get this mounted so that only root can
read /mnt/live? I don't want someone to be able to write code to unpick
the squashfs image, etc. These are programming exams, so they have a
compiler available, and a few of them can probably use it...
(3) The write cache is good, and makes the whole system feel very
responsive, but if a machine crashes or there's a power cut, I'm in
danger of them losing lots of work. Is there a way of decreasing the
maximum "dirty" time for writes to the USB stick? I have found lots of
info on doing this for vm paging, but not for the filesystem itself. All
I've found is how to turn off the cache altogether (mount with 'sync'),
but that's not an option because everything will run much too slowly.
I'd far rather set an option to ensure that everything gets written at
most a minute after entering the cache.
It would be really handy to solve these without resorting to selinux. I
have had some trouble with selinux and the USB sticks, and I would
prefer to leave it disabled. But if selinux is by far the easiest
solution, I can probably work with it.
(I don't know if it's relevant, but currently I have to build this as
Fedora 11, because my first go is a 3D graphics exam, and they need the
proprietary ATI driver.)
Thanks for the help!
James
14 years, 1 month
How to run livecd-creator scripts in a local directory
by Jon Jaroker
Hello,
Is it possible to run the livecd-creator scripts from a local directory,
without installing these scripts to a host server's /usr/bin and /usr/lib
directories? The yum install of livecd-tools will install these scripts to
the host /usr/bin/ and /usr/lib directories.
I am running a continuous build and automated testing of LiveCD and it is
undesirable to install these scripts to the host. It is important that the
scripts reside in the code repository and are run from the build server's
local workspace. These scripts must not modify the build server's
configuration by installing themselves into /usr/bin and /usr/lib.
I placed the imgcreator directory into the same directory as the
livecd-creator script, but was unsuccessful in getting the scripts to run.
I confirmed that the python path starts with the local directory.
Before I begin experimenting with a python wrapper script, I was wondering
if anyone had any advice. Would anyone know why the livecd-creator script
could not import the imgcreate module, even though it was in the local path?
How can I isolate the livecd scripts into a local directory to be sure that
each build is independent?
Thank you,
Jon
14 years, 1 month
Fedora 13 kickstart files?
by Valent Turkovic
Hi,
Fedora 13 Alpha is out, is there a kicstart file available for Fedora
13 alpha so that I start preparing for Fedora 13 remix?
Cheers!
--
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14 years, 1 month
Espeak as default text to speech engine on LiveCD
by Michael Whapples
Hello,
Would it be possible for espeak to be made the default text to speech
engine on the LiveCD?
Reasons for why making the change:
* At the moment the LiveCD comes with festival but this is slow in
comparison to espeak. This means that for users of tools such as orca,
the information presented is delayed and so makes the system appear
unresponsive. This is particularly emphasised at points where orca may
be slow to respond anyway (eg. if the system is under some load or focus
is in a large and/or complicated GUI structure).
* Espeak comes with support for many languages where as festival is
limited (I believe the LiveCD only has one language for festival).
* I believe espeak is more compact than festival. This is particularly
true when considering the number of languages supported by espeak.
* Espeak seems to be more controllable than festival. I don't really
notice any change in festival when I adjust the speech rate in orca, I
do get a change with espeak. This is important as if the speech output
is too fast for a user then they cannot understand it and so cannot use
the system, if it is too slow this is frustrating as it makes the use of
the system unnecessarily slow.
What is required for espeak to be used by orca? The two packages needed
are espeak and gnome-speech-espeak. If the festival packages are removed
then orca will use espeak by default, if festival is not removed then
users can choose between the two.
I hope you will consider changing this on the LiveCD as it should
improve the user experience for blind users.
Michael Whapples
14 years, 1 month
mandatory syslinux on live cd causes perl dependency
by Mads Kiilerich
python-imgcreate adds syslinux to the list of installed packages. AFAICS
that is because it uses data files from syslinux in the installed root
to populate isolinux. It do not execute any syslinux files in the
installed root.
The problem is that syslinux depends on perl. The unused syslinux on the
livecd is the only reason my live cd has perl, and it thus costs 30+ Mb.
How do you think that could be solved / worked around?
Could python-imgcreate be changed to use files from the build system if
they can't be found in the installed root?
Or could syslinux be split into a executable package depending on perl
and a /usr/share/syslinux package?
/Mads
14 years, 1 month
LANGUAGE trumps LC_ALL
by Mads Kiilerich
Regarding
> user: Jim Meyering <meyering(a)redhat.com>
> date: Wed Dec 16 13:46:07 2009 -0500
> files: tools/livecd-iso-to-disk.sh
> description:
> livecd-iso-to-disk.sh: use LC_ALL=C, not LANG=C, since LC_ALL trumps
> all other envvars, including LANG. For example,
> $ LC_ALL=fr_FR.UTF-8 LANG=C /bin/cat no-such
> /bin/cat: no-such: Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type
be aware that LANGUAGE trumps:
$ LC_ALL=fr_FR.UTF-8 LANGUAGE=da_DK /bin/cat no-such
/bin/cat: no-such: Ingen sådan fil eller filkatalog
$ LANGUAGE=da_DK.UTF-8 LC_ALL=fr_FR.UTF-8 LANG=C /sbin/parted
WARNING: You are not superuser. Watch out for permissions.
/dev/mapper/control: open failed: Adgang nægtet
Failure to communicate with kernel device-mapper driver.
Fejl: Ingen enhed fundet
Forsøg igen/Retry/Annullér/Cancel?
/Mads
14 years, 1 month
Custom initrd
by Mads Kiilerich
I am using livecd-creator from livecd-tools-024-1.fc11.i586 and need to
customize the initrd. But I have problems making it work and figuring
out what is going on.
I have figured out that livecd-creator through imgcreate creates a
/etc/sysconfig/mkinitrd. When rpms runs mkinitrd from their %post script
then it will exec mkliveinitrd and use the configured module list.
AFAICS livecd-creator then picks up the initrd from /boot, and the end
result after having written the iso to usb with livecd-iso-to-disk is
that it ends up in /syslinux/initrd0.img.
But if I overwrite the /boot/initrd* in %post like this:
/sbin/mkinitrd -f /boot/initrd-$(rpm -q kernel --qf
'%{version}-%{release}.%{arch}\n').img $(rpm -q kernel --qf
'%{version}-%{release}.%{arch}\n')
then it won't be used.
What am I doing wrong? When is the initrd picked up? What is the code flow?
If I make %post preserve /etc/sysconfig/mkinitrd and boots from usb and
restores /etc/sysconfig/mkinitrd and runs
/sbin/mkinitrd -f /mnt/live/syslinux/initrd0.img $(rpm -q kernel
--qf "%{version}-%{release}.%{arch}\n")
then it works as expected.
/Mads
14 years, 1 month
Accessibility on the LiveCD and installing from LiveCD
by Michael Whapples
Hello,
Firstly let me briefly introduce myself. I have been using Linux for
some years now, originally starting out in text consoles but for the
last couple of years more and more in the gnome desktop. I am a blind
computer user so rely on assistive technologies such as orca
http://live.gnome.org/Orca. My main history has been on distributions
such as slackware and debian, however I felt may be time to start
looking around (partly as I want to do some work on promoting the
accessibility in Linux and for that I may be better with a distribution
such as fedora).
Now to the actual main subject. I just tried installing fedora 12 from
the LiveCD. In the main the process is reasonably accessible (there are
a few points I would alter for a really good user experience, but still
usable), however when I went to reboot the system after running the
installer I hit a big show stopper, the first boot application is
inaccessible and I couldn't find any work around. The issue is that it
runs before loading the full gnome desktop so I can't launch orca and
there is no text based screen reader (eg. speakup or YASR). I have one
question, why does fedora use this first boot application? other
distributions seem to be able to do all that this does (I read the quick
start guide for details of what the first boot application does) on the
LiveCD installer (eg. opensuse, opensolaris, GRML's grml2hd, etc). Would
it be possible for these things to be dealt with on the LiveCD? If there
is a good reason why some may want the first boot application, may be it
could be an optional thing (eg. in the liveinst programme we have a
checkbox for "Use first boot application", if ticked the first boot
application will be used, if unticked user configuration will be done in
liveinst). Another alternative, may be not so satisfactory to me, have
some sort of accessibility for first boot. This would take the form emit
a sound (may be a beep) when first boot starts, the user could use a
keyboard shortcut to load a screen reader. May be accessibility for
first boot could be set to start automatically on the LiveCD (may be a
check box, may be if accessibility is enabled on the LiveCD
accessibility for first boot could be enabled). The big question would
be though, what screen reader will work with first boot? I am sorry I
can't answer this as I can't see the first boot application and so don't
know if it is text based, GTK based, etc.
Other than the speakup modified fedora (which I don't think is an
official fedora distribution) there is no accessible way for a blind
user to install fedora. Anyway for what I need the speakup modified
fedora will not do as it uses the text based installer and so will use
the whole disk, but I have windows on that disk and want to preserve the
windows installation. The LiveCD looks like the most promising solution
for installing fedora if the show stopper problem I mentioned above is
solved.
I will quickly say why I feel accessible install of fedora should
matter. While accessibility of the desktop system itself is important,
many computers don't come with Linux preinstalled, and so many users may
need to install it themselves. Now the LiveCD gives me a good chance to
see what fedora can do (in fact I will be honest and say in the past
that generally fedora has been overlooked by me, but I decided to look
at the LiveCD and it has changed my mind), and if you like what you see
you want to get it installed. Its not always possible to get sighted
assistance and sometimes the sighted assistant may not be as computer
knowledgeable as you would hope, so it would be best if the blind user
could install it independently. Other distributions have made it
possible for blind users to do an accessible install (ubuntu, opensuse,
opensolaris, slackware and debian, possibly others) and so fedora falls
behind in this respect. Talking personally, I cannot proceed with fedora
at the current time as I don't have the appropriate support to get
beyond the first boot screen.
I would be prepared to work with fedora developers to try and solve this
major issue and other smaller issues regarding the accessibility of
installing fedora from LiveCD. Would it be best for me to ask this else
where or approach anyone in particular?
Michael Whapples
14 years, 1 month
