[SATLUG] Re: Decision-based ISOs

[indigotwilight at softhome.net]

>> OK, subject is a bit vague, but stay with me. Has anyone seen or
> programmed
>> a Linux distro where the resulting ISO has only the programs 
>> (including Kernel version) based on questions/drop-downs/whatever on a 
>> website? The thought is to have a custom ISO distro based on what the 
>> customer wants, such as Galeon vs Mozilla, 2.4 vs 2.6, etc., build it 
>> at the web's server (or whatever server dedicated for this), then 
>> offer the result to the customer as a download. Of course, there are 
>> some things that simply would be defaults, such as a way to manage 
>> downloads, but even that can be a choice (apt-get vs RedCarpet vs yum 
>> vs whatever) with no "none" option. Instead of 3-4 CD's (such as for 
>> Fedora and Mandrake), it may only be one
> CD
>> since it theoretically won't require to hold applications that won't 
>> be used.

I see where you're coming from with this.  The first problem is that it 
would be very inefficient to build the iso on the web server and then serve 
it up to the client.  If you have several users connecting at the same time, 
you'd have multiple isos being built/downloaded simultaneously.  Unless the 
web server is some beefy machine, it will grind to halt eventually.  Also, a 
lot of the server disk space would be taken up since the server would have 
to wait for the download to complete before removing the file from the 
system.  Another thing is that if the iso is created dynamically, a user who 
loses the connection to the website can't simply resume the download -- the 
user has to start over with answering all the questions again and building 
the iso again.

A better solution would be a multi-step process.  From the web site, you can 
download a CD of the absolute minimal stuff to install Linux.  Go about the 
install, and once the minimal system is loaded, you could be taken into some 
sort of "further configuration utility."  Here, you can select all of the 
additional software you want and all of the repositories to use.

Once you have the first machine up and going, you can create a local 
repository based on the packages you've downloaded.  You can then create a 
CD based on the local repository on this system.  Now, armed with the 
minimal CD and your personalized "updates" CD, you have all you need to do a 
complete install on another system with only the packages you want.  This 
process doesn't buy you anything if you're just doing a single install.  
But, this is a lifesaver if you'll be doing multiple identical installs or 
need to install on a machine with a slow or non-existant internet 
connection.

There are a couple of interesting yum tutorials on this subject.

http://fedoranews.org/contributors/hal_canary/yum/
http://fedoranews.org/alex/tutorial/yum/

HTH,

 -Mike