[caiman-discuss] What setup is required to start the GNOME desktop in microroot?

[Moinak Ghosh]

Karen Tung wrote:
> [...]
>
> I know that postrun can complete successfully in the proto area.  But 
> the proto area
> has a lot more GNOME packages than the microroot.  Adding the few GNOME 
> packages
> to the microroot already caused its size to grow dramatically.  I can 
> not imagine
> having to include all the GNOME packages in the microroot.
>
> So, my questions is: do you know exactly which GNOME package is required to
> setup whatever it is necessary for the desktop to start?
>
> In the Live Media and the Slim Prototype code, the postrun stuff is run in
> the proto area.  Then, the microroot is setup with the list of files in
> the "mkbootcd.files.minimal".  I examined the mkbootcd.files.minimal file
> carefully, and I don't see any obvious GNOME related stuff get copied over
> to the microroot.  Does that mean the postrun for GNOME does not have to
> happen in the microroot?  Perhaps if somebody can explain exactly how
> the postrun stuff setup the GNOME desktop in the Live Media case, what kind
> of GNOME desktop startup setup needs to be present in the microroot, 
> then, we will
> be able to better debug this problem with getting GNOME to start with
> the Distro Constructor code.
>   

I think this is one limitation of the approach being taken to build the 
microroot.
Doing pkgadds into the microroot will cause these problems and cause 
microroot
to grow drastically over a period of time.

Conceptually we are building a single installed image and creating a 
microroot is
just an architectural necessity to get a LiveCD to work. As such only a 
single
proto area should be built with all postinstall/postrun done only once - 
these should
not have to be repeated for the microroot. That will also cause multiple 
package
databases for the full proto and for the microroot. Two package 
databases do not
make sense in the LiveCD environment and will cause trouble for the Transfer
Module.

Having said that it is also not tenable to retain the microroot approach 
being used
currently in the LiveKit. Maintaining a list of files does not really 
make sense in
the long run. So I think a middle path needs to be taken.

All we need to build the microroot is a list of files. Given a list of 
packages that
should go into the microroot it should be possible to extract the list 
of files and
cpio them from the proto area rather than doing the pkgadds, 
postinstalls and all
the corresponding bloat. So we avoid the file list and avoid problems 
associated
with pkgadds.

Regards,
Moinak.

> Thanks,
>
> --Karen
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