torios-dev team mailing list archive

[Israel <israeldahl@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,
I have been thinking... what if something happened that I could not
continue developing for ToriOS?
So, this will be a generic guide on how to do that.

I will be starting with Debian here, as that *might* be the way we are
going.  I have not heard anything from anyone yet, so we will assume
that we need to use Debian for this tutorial.

To build the Live ISO you need a base OS in tarball form.
Download the Debian Jessie netinstaller CD image:
http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/8.2.0/i386/iso-cd/debian-8.2.0-i386-netinst.iso

Debian has a really nice graphnical installer for their netinstaller, so
feel free to use that since it really looks quite nice.
If you are doing this on a really old computer, rather than a VM, then
use the other installer if you think your machine is too slow.

Pros and Cons of using a VM.
Pros:
You only need one computer.
Cons:
making the tarball is more complicated.  You need 3 Virtual drives.
1) a host OS that you install openssh-server on
2)Your ToriOS building drive (this is where you will install the netinst
image to)
3) a small Fat32 partition (4 Gigs is more than plenty)

You build on one, boot a liveCD ToriOS image and use zmktbl to save the
tarball to your mounted tarball drive.
I labeled mine 'tarpath' for ease of use in PCManFM mounting.


OK,
Debian installer:
Follow all the prompts.  When you get to hostname, use 'torios'
then use 'org' for the domain prompt, or whatever you want.
DO NOT enter a ROOT password in the next prompt.
We will configure it similar to Ubuntu with NO ROOT account, only a user
account.
I usually name my user torios (or sometimes oem)  with a password of torios
This user will be deleted in the install process of ToriOS, so it is
only there for you to set everything up.

When you partition the disk keep the default 'All files in one
partition'  OBI relys on this, so do not configure a separate /home or
anything else fancy.
Then wait for things to finish, everything is pretty straight forward.


When the tasksel part starts,
Uncheck Debian Desktop environment, and print server  we ONLY want the
base standard system

This will do it to make the base for our purposes.

To simply download this basic Jessie tarball
http://phillw.net/isos/torios/jessie-base.tar.xz
OR the onliner for it:
wget http://phillw.net/isos/torios/jessie-base.tar.xz

Then ON you new basic Jessie machine download this script:
http://phillw.net/isos/torios/torios-jessie-x86.sh

the one liner version:
wget http://phillw.net/isos/torios/torios-jessie-x86.sh

chmod +x torios-jessie-x86.sh
./torios-jessie-x86.sh

Enter a password occasionally, watch what it is doing.... if you want.
There is a log file that is created in your $HOME if you are interested
to see the resultant log.

This will make the bare bones ToriOS Debian system.  Seamonkey is NOT
installed, but we might be able to do it... not entirely sure though yet.
IF you are on a 686 machine, then you will need to manually install the
586 (non pae) linux kernel, and remove the old 686 pae kernel.

The script does everything else, EXCEPT cleaning up.
here is a one-liner for that.
sudo apt-get autoclean && sudo apt-get autoremove && sudo apt-get clean
Congrats!  You now have a Debian based ToriOS.  Everything should work
just as expected.  There may be some sort of issues I have not had, feel
free to bring those up.

I am going to upload my recent version of this soon.  I only have the
686 pae version right now, and I have gotten it to an acceptable size,
using this script.
But, I will get the correct kernel in it and check the size again.
The tarball is 347MiB.  The Precise tarball was 320MiB, so it has grown
a bit, but we have a backup (to using Ubuntu) that is showing a lot of
promise now.
I got the tarball down from around 430something MiB so it is close to
about as good as we can get it, though the 586 kernel may shrink it a
bit more.
I have been testing an ISO I have made with Jessie, and The live ISO
works the same.  It has newer libraries, etc, but everything functions
as you would expect.
I will be rebuilding my ISO to test with my newer base OS, and we shall
see how big it is, and IF I can get OBI to work nicely with the Debian
differences, and newer software differences.

I will let you all know when I have more of an update.

(note I am uploading the jessie-base tarball currently, so it may be
some time before it is ready.  This tarball is a MINI os, not a ToriOS
tarball.  Just something to experiment with if need be)

-- 
Regards