Re: [Gnumed-devel] postgresql live cd

[Tim Churches]

Karsten Hilbert wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 02, 2007 at 05:48:00AM +1000, Tim Churches wrote:
> 
>>>>>> Just found that
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/unix/bsd/archives/postgresql-livecd-14866
>>>>>> It's based on xubuntu I read.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Does someone feel like adding gnumed-client to it and bootstrapping a
>>>>>> database ?
>>>>> It does have Python but does it have psycopg2 ? One would
>>>>> need to find out. I suppose one could get the author of
>>>>> pg_live to include it if not.
>>>> Guess so. Even if it is missing it shouldn't be too hard to get GNUmed 
>>>> running. I am just thinking of using it as a base for customization.
>>> There is a shell script in the latest tarball release for NetEpi
>>> Collection (see http://sourceforge.net/projects/netepi ) which takes the
>>> Ubuntu LiveCD distribution and strips out unecessay stuff, installs
>>> PostgreSQL and NetEpi and various screencast demo movies and the manuals
>>> etc, and then creates an ISO for burning. The resulting ISO is about
>>> 350MB, wwhich is just half of the original Ubuntu ISO size. However, it
>>> still needs 512MB of RAM to boot properly.
>>>
>>> I mention this because you might what to use that script as a starting
>>> point. At some stage we want to try it with Xubuntu as well, which
>>> should result in a considerably smaller ISO and lower booting memory
>>> requirements. And of course update it for the latest release of Ubuntu,
>>> which is in late beta release now. Happy to collaborate with GNUmed to
>>> create a Ubuntu/Xubuntu config script that can be shared and customised
>>> from NetEpi or GNUmed use.
>> I should add that we have tested the persistence option with PostgreSQL
>> with the above liveCD and it works nicely: a) boot the liveCD b) plug in
>> any USB memory key (or any other USB storage device, like an external
>> hard drive - I've been using the tiny Seagate 2.5GB drives and they work
>> really well)c) copy a single file to the root directory of the USB
>> device - no need to reformat it or create a partition on it d) reboot
>> the liveCD and choose persistence mode -> PostgreSQL is now mounted from
>> the USB drive, and all data is staved there. It seems fairly robust,
>> even when you pull the USB drive out without shutting down. I wouldn't
>> recommend it for routine production use but it is great as a demo or for
>> a trial system.
> 
> My suggestion would be to try and get this going. The added
> benefit is that we get GNUmed and NetEpi into the same
> environment which just may bring about some sort of
> interfacing or other.

OK, although I wasn't suggesting that we have a joint NetEpi/GNUmed
liveCD (although that makes sense, but our liveCD has custom NetEpi boot
screens etc - but they could be NetEpi plus GNUmed boot screens and teh
user chooses which product they wish to demo - the only difference being
screen backgrounds etc and the local "home page" which appears
automatically in Firefox when the CD boots - but whichever option is
chosen, both GNUmed and NetEpi would be available via links from the
home page for the user to try). In the first instance I thought that we
could just share the ISO configure/build script with switches to denote
whether a GNUmed or a NetEpi CD is built. Have a look at the script and
let me know - I am planning our work schedule for the next 10 weeks in
the next few days and can include some time to do some more work on the
liveCD. Should be able to give you access to an ISO to download to see
how it works by the end of the week. Hmm, a joint demo CD makes a lot of
sense, given the similar infrastructure: PostgreSQL and Python. Only
major difference is wxWindows/wxPython versus Apache/FastCGI/Albatross.

Tim C