SquashFS?

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 17:18 -0400, Jeremy Katz wrote: 
> On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 14:00 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> > My major point is that a LiveCD has needs that Fedora Core does not.
> > Because of the route we're travelling with Kadischi we have to think of
> > some way to satisfy those needs that fits comfortably with the rest of
> > the Fedora development philosophy and infrastructure.
> 
> After some investigation, I really don't feel the needs are that
> different.  

Perhaps "needs" is the wrong word then.  How about a LiveCD needs
different technologies to achieve its ends than a hard drive install.

In our two instances: 
squashfs addresses two needs of a LiveCD: 1) Ability to add more
information to a limited space.  This has not seemed to be a goal for
Core.  We talk about limiting the size of the necessary install in terms
of dropping packages from the necessary set, not how to make more
applications available in less space.  2) Faster access to programs on
disk.  Fedora has worked to increase startup speed via bootchart
profiling, readahead, early login in gdm, and prelink.  All of these
benefit LiveCDs as well.  Core has not decided to make a read-only,
compressed image of all the programs and files on the system so they
load from disk faster.  Possibly because you'd have to remaster the
image that we boot from.  It's a pretty poor tradeoff for Core.  But for
a LiveCD that is already read-only and already remastered anytime
there's a change, and where transferring from disk is tremendously
slower, it's a natural fit.

unionfs overcomes a LiveCD's inability to write to its filesystem.  The
goal is to provide the ability to modify configuration, provide a place
to store user data and system customization, and make less work when
adapting a standard linux distro to a CD environment.  stateless
addresses the last of the issues directly by adapting the standard
distro to not write to the root filesystem.  The other two are provided
via a preconfigured network server.  A LiveCd which includes
"try-before-you-buy" and rescue capabilities as goals cannot depend on
having a preconfigured server on the network (or even the nhtwork) in
order to operate.  Additionally, unionfs adds the capability to appear
to write to a liveCD's filesystem and therefore adds to the potential
uses for the liveCD.  stateless attempts to subtract the need to write
to the filesystem and therefore make Fedora more suited to be remotely
managed.  The liveCDs and stateless have different goals which have
overlapping areas of interest but don't always coincide.

-Toshio
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