ZMLiveCD 2008

technicavolous · Post by **technicavolous** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 10:42 pm

In thread http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10781, regarding the making of LiveCD's for Zone Minder

rdmelin wrote: If a team could be assembled to decide on a long term strategy and split up the tasks I think we could put out a rock solid solution.

The purpose of this thread is to create a 'Rock Solid' ZMLiveCD with current released distributions of linux, and document its process in order to ease recreating the project as new generations of distributions emerge.

In this thread I'd like to see the following -
Definition of goals
Discussion of which distros may be more suited for the project
Establishment of documentation including references to similar projects
Determination of tasks
Features

And probably a bunch of things I never thought of. End result, we want a live cd that has all of ZM's functionality and is installable to a system.

What say you?

Lee Sharp · Post by **Lee Sharp** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 3:39 pm

You should understand that there are three and a half "Live CDs" now.

Curtis has an Xubuntu based one to support his cards and his business. He has a vested interest in a working stable system. He also placed it on sourceforge. However, it does not use Peters debs that are in the repositories, so upgrade is tougher.

There is the classic that Ross made. I know little about this one, but I do know that he is one guy doing this in his free time. He has said that a formal project could be good.

There is a Puppy Linux version as well. I know nothing about it other than the guy seems dedicated.

You can get a working live system using the Ubuntu live CDs or the sisters (Kubuntu, xubuntu, Linux Mint...) by booting and running "sudo apt-get install zoneminder" from a cli.

Now, I like having all these. When it comes to troubleshooting, having another distribution handy is so nice. How many times have we seen "It works on the Liv CD, but not on my Gentoo derivative." I like the idea of giving these guys some help, and making things more current, but don't drop the other flavors. Just my opinion...

rdmelin · Post by **rdmelin** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 8:39 pm

Thanks Tracy for getting this thread started. I think the objectives are well stated.

And good to hear your input Lee. I'm hoping we will hear lot's more from you and many others. Especially those involved in existing CD projects.

I certainly don't want to abandon the original ZMliveCD project that I've been maintaining for several years. But I don't have the time to do it alone anymore. And I think it could be improved with the help of some new contributors.

I'll get back here later this eve with some ideas to stir the pot. Meanwhile please don't anyone hesitate to jump in with input, feedback, etc.

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 1:31 am

when i first got the live cd bug i found pclos to be excellent. If tha has stable mklivecd then id say we should start with thta

also a slimline version

rdmelin · Post by **rdmelin** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 2:40 am

i found pclos to be excellent.

Hi James. Glad to see you jump in here.
I agree the pclos (Or pclinuxos) has a lot going for it. And I can't think of much to say against it either. Let's get a few points out here so we can compare if any suggest another distro.

1. It has a well maintained toolkit to build livecds (they are the defacto developers of mklivecd these days)

2. There is a companion installer utility (their hacked version of draklive_install)

3. Pclinuxos is for all intents rebranded Mandriva, and I have packaging ZoneMinder for Mandriva under control so this would be an easy transition.

4. There is currently a slimmed down version that would be a good starting point for a custom (zm) version. Google for "pclinuxos 2008 minime"

5. They have a "rollling release" model. This is to me a big plus. Distros that release a new version every 6 months are a headache to maintain packages for. Im thinking about two years from now. I'd rather not be building ZoneMinder 1.24.3 for Distro versions 2008.0 2008.1 2009.0 2009.1 2010.0 and 2010.1. Yet I would like to have users be able to upgrade their systems without reinstalling.

6. Pclinuxos has a very "newbie" friendly community. Users with non ZoneMinder questions could be encouraged to use their forums for support.

Whatever distro we choose, my hope is to provide the most ZMliveCD for the least amount of developement and maitainance effort possible. I'm just philosophically opposed to duplicated effort.

Post by **cordel** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 4:52 am

Hey guys, I was going to suggest piggybacking on an active livecd project, but I see that it's already heading that direction which is good to see. This would certainly cut down the development time and pclinuxos sure sounds like a prime candidate. It would be easy to build packages for and easy to setup a repo that handles just ZM and associated packages since Ross and I have been through this before in the early packaging days and most if not all should be easy to make the transfer.

Lee Sharp · Post by **Lee Sharp** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 6:09 am

Sounds good to me. As many of you know I am a Ubuntu bigot.

But having a simple RH based system to quickly test uncooperative hardware against is Priceless so this makes me happy. Any hamfisted support I can give is offered.

rdmelin · Post by **rdmelin** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 1:05 am

OK in the interest of generating some momentum I have put up packages for zm and necessary perl mods for PCLinuxOS.
http://sentrix.homeip.net/rpms/pclos2007/

PCLOS is a rolling release distro so the "2007" packages work fine on "2008 minime" ( I know because I just built and tested them on 2008 minime)

The other needed perl mods are in the noarch directory at the above site.

Consider this a prototype kit. All the needed parts are available for some adventurous soul to assemble. Grab the minime CD. Check out the remaster info on the PCLOS forums and wiki. Install the needed packages using "apt-get install" install to fill in the dependancies.

Any offers for a host site? I PM'd curtishall about the sourceforge site but haven't heard back yet.

When we have a working prototype we will need volunteers for artwork, documentation, hardware testing, etc.

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 1:22 am

Ross
we also need to add all the taking care of itslef bits, ie mysql checks etc.

Ill download minime the weekend, can you ppost your artwork files from your last cd and ill do those bits.

rdmelin · Post by **rdmelin** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 12:31 am

James, I put what I have from the previous CDs here:
http://sentrix.homeip.net/livecd/artwork/
It's not much. If anyone wants to work on a new look that fine with me.

Someone will need to get their hands dirty with the gfxboot splash stuff. If you're up for that James, thats great. What PCLOS has is very nice and has a very functional help system. It would be great to have our own look but not lose any of the function. Unfortunately gfxboot is not very well documented so you or someone will need to figure it out.

The hacked mysql start script we may be able to just copy over from the old version. I'll take a look and see how they compare when I get some time.

technicavolous · Post by **technicavolous** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 6:49 am

Great stuff! I'll not be able to play for another day or so, but I guess I'm going to learn pclos ... I still like Mandriva, tho - Too bad they don't document their draklive better.

I was googling around looking for boot information and I happened across this -
http://www.mondorescue.org/

Nothing to do with live distros, but in the field this is a marvelous tool. It appears to handle linux raid and LVM fairly well, I've made a 'snapshot' of one machine and it passed 'compare mode' but I haven't tried to restore yet. Anyway, if it works, nice tool.

Ross - I have three systems live in the field based on the files you posted and Mandriva 2008 / 1.23.1. Two 8 cam systems and one 16 cam system, using KMC4400 capture cards. They've agreed to be happy ginney pigs

All seem to be working fine altho one has a real problem with nvidea 7100gs cards.

Great job!!

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:25 am

i think if we are gonna do this we should by default offer a zm install how itr should be done, nothing wierd, nothing fancy just stable and self healing. If people want wierd they dont want a live cd IMO

rdmelin · Post by **rdmelin** » Sun Feb 03, 2008 4:04 pm

technicavolous wrote

I have three systems live in the field based on the files you posted and Mandriva 2008 / 1.23.1. Two 8 cam systems and one 16 cam system, using KMC4400 capture cards. They've agreed to be happy ginney pigs Wink All seem to be working fine altho one has a real problem with nvidea 7100gs cards.

Just a heads up for anyone using 1.23.* either on mdv2008 or upgraded ZMliveCD. The included filters are broken. PurgeWhenFull needs to be deleted and recreated. See this thread:
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11034

As the above thread highlights this is not specifically related to the RPMs but affects at least some source installations as well.
Also the automatic db backup scripts are broken as well and have been removed. When I get some time to troubleshoot them I will reinclude them in an update RPM.

technicavolous · Post by **technicavolous** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 2:48 am

Thanks for the heads up - I thought I had broken something in setting up the filters on one. I have huge hd's on these, they'll last for a couple of months, so I have some time on that. Nice to have ginnea pig buddies

I downloaded PCLinuxOS MiniMe, isn't that based on MDV2008? Anyway, it does find my hardware and I'm getting ready to do a 'closet session' to see if I can get things working.

The mondo rescue thing works great. I've successfully restored several MDV systems. A ffriend of mine told me to look up G4L, ghost for linux but I haven't looked yet.

Has anyone done anything with 'Fully Automated Install' or FAI?
http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/
Seems kinda cool.

OK, so I'll dig into PLCOS tonite and tomorrow. The package Minime looks nice, it has the draklive stuff apparently working pretty well, and if I've read correctly it shouldn't really be that hard to remaster.

Has anyone gone the distance with a pclos remaster?

rdmelin · Post by **rdmelin** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 3:37 am

I downloaded PCLinuxOS MiniMe, isn't that based on MDV2008?

Well sorta. Originally pclos was forked from Mandrake about version 9.0 I believe. In 2007 they could no longer build up to date kernels with the aging glibc and compiler. So they started over forking Mandriva's development version about equiv to 2007.1. They keep their packages about synced with Mandriva but dont update glibc and gcc so they can do their rolling release. Their apt for RPM and synaptic package management is working well too.

Has anyone gone the distance with a pclos remaster?

I've done several and I know James has as well. They now have a nice gui (well attractive X dialog anyway) that make it pretty easy. You'll find it in the menu if you look.