Ingenue ideas

[eitan1989]

As noted in today's status update to gentoo-dev and gentoo-soc, I'm looking for suggestions what kind of features would be most useful in an automatic image builder.
Some ideas to consider:
-Creating a system that explicitly does not have portage or the toolchain installed
-A system that is truly complete, with working kernel and a configured bootloader waiting to be installed (basically covering as many parts of the Gentoo install guide as are practical to do while working with a target installation not connecting to the target hardware and that can't only be modified with external software from the host system, not actually chrooted and used)
-The ability to configure a build once, then request it to be rebuilt from time to time with updated versions of packages

Target image formats:
-tar/bz2
-ISO (bootable or not?)
-Virtualization software-compatible - VMWare, etc.

I'd like any ideas that I haven't thought of (and responses on the desirability of those I have)

[avx]

1. Don't know if this will be www-only, but I'd like to have an off-web-solution, i.e. have a tool to pop in the drive, boot and from there create images I like based on a local portage/package repo. So, i.e. if I have to setup a few machines at a firm, I don't need to download x-isos, but just take my cd and my portage with me.

2. Don't know what is currently planned, but "complete" kde/gnome/xfce-environments would be nice, also specific selections for file or mail-servers.

[Dagger]

1. I'm assuming you might want to add jffs2 - as it's one of the most popular formats for flash NAND.
2. Alternative package managers would be nice. When you select an option to add portage - I would change it to PM and allow to select of of three currently available solutions (leaving portage as a default one). Of course some basic pre-configuration (based on system type) should be done automatically for each of PM.
3. default use flag selection for packages would be great. That would of course require to re-compile some of the packages and not use pre-build binaries - not an easy task.
4. in virtualisation software - you definitely want Qemu/KVM images.

So far the project looks great. Keep up great job.
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[rmanola]

I'm interested in testing the system when it becomes available.

My e-mail: rmanola(at)inf(dot)ufes(dot)br

[ArneBab]

I'd also love to have this as offline solution which can run on every Gentoo install. It would be nice if it could work just like crosscompiling, so it also stores cross-binpackages and I can use these again and again to create new slightly modified versions.

As additional feature I'd like to have "image for a USB-stick" (e.g. tar.gz) which I can just download/create and then unpack/copy onto the USB-stick.

It would open up the possibility of writing a "Gentoo on a stick" program: Just start it, select the configuration (kernel-config + world-file + USE flags + basic configuration) and the target architecture and get an image to put on a bootable USB stick without any more fiddling required. Maybe it could even add the option of creating user-accounts and associated data (the Gentoo reference stick ( ) with Gentoo artwork and example documents in the user account - some KDE devs wanted to have something like that for a long time).

Basic configuration for stuff like wpa_assistant, networking and similar. All configs with sane defaults and ideally with categories (e.g. "KDE build + WLAN + laptop"). Maybe adding to that user-configs which can easily be shared ("I created this multimedia config. Just pop it into the builder to make your image a multimedia station").

Also the option "copy my system for target X".

Also more complex options which take a long time (or reading) to build at home:

* A completely encrypted system, where the (ideally also for a USB stick). As stronger option also a truecrypt system.

* A system where all data is loaded into RAM, if enough memory is available (so no drive accesses are necessary - can be a significant speed boost for systems with much memory). For this an init script which stores changes data onto the disk at shutdown would also be useful.


Besides: Personally I only need Gentoo systems. A general solution is nice, but if that weakens the flexibility, I'd prefer to have a pure Gentoo version with all options.

PS: I came here because I read your mail on the Gentoo gsoc list and I think your project looks great!
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