Newsletter Volume 1 Livecd

Luca Casagrande

luca.casagrande@gmail.com

http://ominiverdi.org

Introduction

What is a Livecd

As Wikipedia report, liveCd is a "is a generic term for an operating system distribution that is executed upon boot, without installation on a hard drive. Typically, it is stored on bootable media such as a CD-ROM (Live CD), DVD (Live DVD), USB flash drive (Live USB), among others". Using this kind of application user can get a "taste" of a full Linux box without fighting with any setup or installation. Once the liveCd has been booted, everything it's loaded in the RAM keeping safe the hard disk. Of course, once the machine it's shut down, every change it's lost.

Tasks

There are many application that can be satisfied by a livecd:

1. Using your favorite application everywhere you can find a pc. With a Pen Drive to save your data you'll have a perfect survival kit.
2. Teaching purpose: people can have machine with the needed software in a boot time.
3. Using old machine: liveCd can be run on smooth machine and also without HD.
4. Spreading data: it's a very cool way to distribute your work around. You deliver your work ( for example data ) and all application needed and configured to appreciate it !

Limitation of a Livecd

Inside a livecd we have got the kernel, the drivers, the WM and all the applications. Of course is pretty impossible to put all the driver that could suite all the machine that have been created; can happen that, during the boot the cd stops or something else goes wrong (missing lan detection for example). During the years, have been created very good tool that detect the hardware during the boot, but, like every software application, there can be still bug. So you must see a failing boot, as a crash..that will be fixed soon!

The other thing that should be clear, it's that no information it's saved while working in the livecd enveroment. This is good from a side (for example for keeping safe your hard disk) but can be tedious from another way. The solution for this is use a Storage Device (like an USB HD for example) to store all your outputs. This approach could also be used to save configuration file, so that you can have the same setting at every boot.

LiveCd and open source geospatial software

LiveCd can be a valid tool together with open source geospatial software. It could be used in one of the situation we already explained so that an easy access to user that want to try those new application. An example of the use of liveCd and GIS FOSS application, it's running a workstation that will allow the user to explore data inside it or, for example, in a Postgis DB. Using old hardware you could spread those kind of workstation all around the office.

During the FOSS4G 2007 at Lausanne we used 2 LiveCds during seminaries (ka-Map and Grass 3d). We've allowed attendants to test immediately what they were seeing in the slide show. Once the workshop ended they have been able to take away their liveCd and use it at home or at their office. This is a good example of the great potential of liveCd in Educational purpose.

Ominiverdi Livecd

Objective

Our livecd will try to offer to user always those things:

1. Keep all software up to date with every single official release
2. Include Guide, Documents and Tutorial
3. Grant a good hardware compatibilty

Tecnical development

We decided to use the same tool that Gentoo Release Engineering use: Catalyst.

This choice as been made for 2 main reason:

1. Use a system that will keep the updating fast and safe
2. Allow the customization of everything inside the cd

Desktop 2007.0

Our first release for 2007 contains these software:

   * QGIS 0.8
   * GRASS 6.2.1
   * PostgreSQL 8.1.5
   * PostGIS 1.1.4
   * GDAL 1.3.2 

All the system run on a kernel 2.6.18 and use Gnome as Desktop Manager.

While writing this abstract, we are waiting for Qgis 0.8.1 for releasing version 2007.1.

Future Development and task

Our goal is to keep the cd updated, creating new version at regular times, or at least as soon as major update or included softwares will come out.

Right now we are working on two tasks:

1. An Installer for the livecd
2. A server edition with mapserver and some webgis application

LiveCD installer

The installer will be accessible trough an icon on the desktop. The installation process will guide the user to the set up of the linux distribution in his computer. Installing on the hard disk will allow better performances and the possibility to update all packages thanks to Gentoo systems.

Server Edition

The server edition will target a server machine with minimum graphical support but full featured set of application to offer OCG Web Services and UMN Mapserver front ends (ka-Map, Open Layers, p.Mapper, ecc.).

More Infos

• Ominiverdi Livecd Project
• Gentoo Catalyst Project