Re: [Koha] Avoid LiveCDs/LiveDVDs
Dear Friends, I am trying to build a Koha Live cd/dvd on Ubuntu 12.04. But the process is not completed yet. I tried Remastersys with Ubuntu 12.04 and found that it does not work. Now I am trying to work with UCK to build a live CD. I am ready to join the Koha team as Live CD/DVD release manager. Before that I have to find an ideal Ubuntu customization tool to build Koha Live DVD. My plan is that build a ready to use Koha Live CD. Little bit customisations can make the live cd easy for Koha newbies. The lice can be use in live mode with installer. Regards, -- Vimal Kumar V. Mahatma Gandhi University Library Kottayam, Kerala- 686 560 Web: http://www.vimalkumar.org Blog: http://linuxhalwa.blogspot.com http://kohageek.blogspot.in --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I forget what I was taught. I only remember what I have learnt" -Patrick White
Dear Vimal, On Sat, Oct 6, 2012 at 9:13 AM, Vimal Kumar V. <vimal0212@gmail.com> wrote: I am trying to build a Koha Live cd/dvd on Ubuntu 12.04.
But the process is not completed yet. I tried Remastersys with Ubuntu 12.04 and found that it does not work. Now I am trying to work with UCK to build a live CD.
You are on the right track :) Although UCK is not the only avenue to build a LiveCD/DVD, I have built a v3.8.4 LiveCD style installer on Kubuntu 12.04 using UCK for one of my project in West Bengal. Although in my use-case, it does not require a live environment, more of a custom installer that will install library specific configurations for each of the 170 libraries. cheers -idg -- Indranil Das Gupta Phone : +91-98300-20971 Blog : http://indradg.randomink.org/blog IRC : indradg on irc://irc.freenode.net Twitter : indradg -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Please exchange editable Office documents only in ODF Format. No other format is acceptable. Support Open Standards. For a free editor supporting ODF, please visit LibreOffice - http://www.documentfoundation.org
Dear Vimal, I applaud your efforts. I believe Live CDs have a valuable place in allowing non-technical people the opportunity to try Koha. Koha, particularly in the past, was not an easy piece of software to install and try, LiveCDs made it much easier. Although they may not be the ultimate choice by many for a 'production' system they are valuable none the less. I appreciate your efforts. Thank you. Best wishes, Clint. Vimal Kumar V. wrote:
Dear Friends,
I am trying to build a Koha Live cd/dvd on Ubuntu 12.04. But the process is not completed yet. I tried Remastersys with Ubuntu 12.04 and found that it does not work. Now I am trying to work with UCK to build a live CD.
I am ready to join the Koha team as Live CD/DVD release manager. Before that I have to find an ideal Ubuntu customization tool to build Koha Live DVD.
My plan is that build a ready to use Koha Live CD. Little bit customisations can make the live cd easy for Koha newbies. The lice can be use in live mode with installer.
Regards,
-- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
On 6 October 2012 18:54, clint.deckard <clint.deckard@frontiers.co.nz> wrote:
Dear Vimal, I applaud your efforts. I believe Live CDs have a valuable place in allowing non-technical people the opportunity to try Koha. Koha, particularly in the past, was not an easy piece of software to install and try, LiveCDs made it much easier. Although they may not be the ultimate choice by many for a 'production' system they are valuable none the less. I appreciate your efforts. Thank you.
While that is true, it is vitally important the CDs are kept up to date, and links to old ones removed. We just had someone in #koha on ircwho has just in installed 3.01.00.999 from a live cd. That version is over 2 years old and has known security issues. I think this is what Mark was trying to say, perhaps the thread should be, old and way out of date LiveCD should be avoided. I'm glad to see someone is going to be maintaining them. Doing 2 LiveCD releases every month is a reasonable amount of work so I applaud them for wanting to. Chris
Greetings, As you can see, I tried to rephrase what I meant as a more positive subject line. On 6 October 2012 18:54, clint.deckard <clint.deckard@frontiers.co.nz> wrote:
I believe Live CDs have a valuable place in allowing non-technical people the opportunity to try Koha.
If it installs easily to a hard drive and let's them have a packages-based, fully functional Koha on a single machine without continuing to rely on the CD/DVD, that is a good thing for non-technical people with a production environment. Though, you may end up doing a Desktop GUI type install, just so that single instance can run its own graphical browser for the simplicity of the end-user. Chris Cormack wrote:
... it is vitally important the CDs are kept up to date, and links to old ones removed.
This was one of the major reasons why I was saying Live CDs/DVDs should be avoided. They go out of date quickly, and the person generating it stops producing more current versions. This leads to problems like the following. Chris Cormack wrote:
We just had someone in #koha on irc who has just in installed 3.01.00.999 from a live cd. That version is over 2 years old and has known security issues.
Additionally, there was a 3.2.5 Live CD/DVD that was still being used recently. After others contacted the author, since they are no longer supporting it, they graciously removed their sourceforge version of it, and I removed references to it on the wiki. Chris Cormack wrote:
I think this is what Mark was trying to say, perhaps the thread should be, old and way out of date LiveCD should be avoided.
In part yes, the other part was people continued to use them in production. And though people have differing opinions on this point, given the amount of data that even a small library has (it's at least a weeks worth of data entry for a non-touch typist), it makes no sense to me, and others I have talked with, to be running a production system like that. And backing up data is like putting a bandage on a bad solution, in my opinion. However, being able to install off a Live CD/DVD would mean they could then share the Live CD/DVD with someone else ( sharing means caring ;) ) and merely do a "sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade" to update their Koha installation on a forward basis. And it would just work fine. And backing up would be a good thing to do for a good solution. Vimal mentioned that having a specific Koha server for production is cost prohibitive. The question I have is what software would a library with such funding limits be running other than Koha (which handles library functionality perfectly well)? And do not equivalents exist in Linux? For example, LibreOffice for MS-Office. If there are linux equivalents, then I see no reason to not install the Live CD/DVD on one computer. Of course, this question is beyond the scope of Koha, so I don't expect answers here. Chris Cormack wrote:
I'm glad to see someone is going to be maintaining them.
Vimal's Live CD/DVDs are still being maintained, and he is making efforts to catch up and keep up. I applaud his efforts in this regard. I hope I didn't presume too much in adding your name, Vimal, to http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Roles_for_3.12
Doing 2 LiveCD releases every month is a reasonable amount of work so I applaud them for wanting to.
I agree monthly would be perfect, but even every 6 months (in line with the new releases 3.10.0, 3.12.0, etc.) would be sufficient (not perfect, but sufficient). This is particularly so, if they install it to a hard drive and do the "sudo apt-get update;sudo apt-get upgrade" to keep it current. The current stable Live CDs/DVDs could come with a warning "Sorry this CD/DVD is more than a year old, please contact <insert contact information> for a more recent version" built in triggered past a certain date. The previous stable Live CDs/DVDs could have a similar message, but for only 6 months. Because if the Live CD/DVD is released when it is current stable, 6 months from now it is previous stable, and one year from now it is out dated. Sadly, I was pondering current stable vs. old stable, and both the current stable release and the previous stable releases would have to be created, because the repository for the previous stable version is different than the repository for the current stable. This means technically, that a Live CD/DVD of both current and previous stable versions every six months (when a new release is done) is the bare minimum requirement. Though, current and previous stable releases on a monthly basis are probably best. Hopefully this clarifies everything from my perspective. :) GPML, Mark Tompsett
Vimal Kumar V. schrieb am 06.10.2012
I am ready to join the Koha team as Live CD/DVD release manager. Before that I have to find an ideal Ubuntu customization tool to build Koha Live DVD.
That's good news. Would you like to put this new position and your name on the Wiki at http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Roles_for_3.12 ? -- Mirko
thank you very much for the work can you public the step by step live cd? greetings El 06/10/2012 01:55, "Mirko" <5p4m@gmx.de> escribió:
Vimal Kumar V. schrieb am 06.10.2012
I am ready to join the Koha team as Live CD/DVD release manager. Before that I have to find an ideal Ubuntu customization tool to build Koha Live DVD.
That's good news. Would you like to put this new position and your name on the Wiki at http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Roles_for_3.12 ?
-- Mirko _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
participants (7)
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Chris Cormack -
clint.deckard -
Indranil Das Gupta -
juan hernandez -
Mark Tompsett -
Mirko -
Vimal Kumar V.