[gentoo-dev] GNAP 1.7 Release (Gentoo Network APpliance)

[gentoo-dev] GNAP 1.7 Release (Gentoo Network APpliance)

[Thierry Carrez]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1185 bytes --]

GNAP 1.7 is out !

GNAP is a Gentoo-based Network Appliance building system. It allows to
build LiveCDs or bootable disks with a customized network appliance
configuration in seconds. This is especially useful to quickly install
Gentoo on small-CPU hosts to use them as routers, firewalls, VPN boxen...

Starting points :
http://embedded.gentoo.org/gnap.xml
http://embedded.gentoo.org/gnap-userguide.xml

This version includes two major new features.

R/W overlay
It is now possible to specify the name of a partition from which to
overlay files at boot-time, allowing to write configuration changes back
to a floppy or a specific CF partition for example.

Easier extensibility
Add new functionality to GNAP used to force you to rebuild a complete
new core, which took both time and effort. The new extension system in
gnap_make allows you to build extensions without building a new core,
and the new gnap_remaster tool helps you to add extensions to existing
core files.

So emerge gnap and play ! Ask me on IRC for any questions you may have.

For bugs/patches/enhancement requests, use the Bugzilla "Embedded"
component and assign bugs to me. Thank you.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (Koon)

[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] GNAP 1.7 Release (Gentoo Network APpliance)

[Chris Gianelloni]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 699 bytes --]

On Tue, 2005-05-31 at 17:04 +0200, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> This version includes two major new features.
> 
> R/W overlay
> It is now possible to specify the name of a partition from which to
> overlay files at boot-time, allowing to write configuration changes back
> to a floppy or a specific CF partition for example.

Just curious, but what did you do to do this?  I'm going to guess
there's some boot-time option to mount a unionfs, no?  Is this something
we can extend to genkernel to allow us to have configurable LiveCD
releases, or is it something that is GNAP-specific?

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] GNAP 1.7 Release (Gentoo Network APpliance)

[Thierry Carrez]

Chris Gianelloni wrote:

>>R/W overlay
>>It is now possible to specify the name of a partition from which to
>>overlay files at boot-time, allowing to write configuration changes back
>>to a floppy or a specific CF partition for example.
> 
> Just curious, but what did you do to do this?  I'm going to guess
> there's some boot-time option to mount a unionfs, no?  Is this something
> we can extend to genkernel to allow us to have configurable LiveCD
> releases, or is it something that is GNAP-specific?

Oh no. I just found out about unionfs very recently, thanks to solar.

The current implementation is completely manual (and asynchronous) : the
contents of the partition is overlaid over the live filesystem at boot,
and you can remount the partition later on to save modified files. The
idea is to backup some /etc and /var things that you want to keep over a
reboot.

What is GNAP-specific, though, is the idea to add a tarball to a LiveCD
and have an init script overlay files over the filesystem at boot. This
allows user-level customization of the LiveCD configuration files in
seconds. The "R/W overlay" feature is just there to avoid burning a new
LiveCD whenever you change a conf file.

-- 
Koon
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list