In a few hours I will release my distribution of Red Hat Linux. Please visit my ftp for the iso image, patch to the anaconda runtimes, my comps version, and the tool for creating distributions.
Year: 2002
Good news
There are two much of good news today. First, this site has been moved to new hosting facilities, where it will hopefully be a bit faster and updated more often.
Another exciting point is that my distribution based on Red Hat Linux 7.3 is almost ready. I have successfully fit it on one CD (~ 570 MB), replaced sendmail with exim (version 4.04), replaced wu_ftpd with proftpd, added bash complition and mc into minimal installation, and did few other nice things. I’ve even got couple of people to be beta testers and it works fine till now. In couple of days I will release the patch to anaconda, file listings, and the tool I’ve wrote for speeding up dependecy checking. Stay tuned. :)
Hacking Red Hat CDs
Still playing with Red Hat Linux 7.3. By now I have managed to fit it on the single CD (650 MB). Anaconda (installation program) got me pulling hair out of my head though. First, I have no prior experience with Python. Second, after I checked it out, I think I am the luckiest man alive (that I didn’t). Thirdly, code is pretty weird; for example, it is very easy to specify default language for installation, but things like changing grub to lilo, or specifying different default timezone, or allowing ssh connections in default firewall settings made spend lots of time :) If one day you will have to do something in Python, you will definetely thank Python website for providing good documentation. Concerning RPMs, I can easily put updates on distribution CD now, change Package groups (like Printing support, etc), and even substitute some software by another, like I did with proftpd obsoleting wu_ftpd and anonftp. What I need now is some way of verifying that directory with RPM packages is self-contained without actually producing a real distribution and installing it. :) Tomorrow it will work hopefully.
Another nice surprise got me when I upgraded my DVD machine to Red Hat Linux 7.3. After all, low latency does not appear to be that good for DVD playing (tested with xine, mplayer, and ogle). Without low latency support DVDs are playing much better, but still by far not that good as it was with 2.4.9. Tomorrow I will downgrade the kernel and check it out.
Last one for today – I have put the new picture of myself. This time I am with my girlfriend. And, yes, that “Li” on my t-shirt is a part of word “Linux” :)
More stuff and Quake III
Today (or actually yesterday) I was still playing with Red Hat 7.3 installation CDs. Not much to go – now it fits into single 720 MB image which happen to boot and install nicely.
Part of the last weekend was spent on upgrading my home network to Red Hat 7.3, thanks to power failure which brought my home server down again (and yes, UPS is on my wish list :) ). Apparently, everything went nice except for strange mouse disappearence from my workstation and some problems with DVD playing. Changing mice with my girlfriend happened to fix my problem, without creating one for her. DVDs are more complicated though and I am still working on the issue.
Saturday ended up with one of my friends at our place and a first Quake III lan with me using DVD box, laying on the floor and aiming via TV set. :) Almost broke my neck, but had lots of fun… till 6am. :)
Back from holidays
I am back from holidays. Most of the time was spent on rearrangements of my home network. I have downgraded the CPU to PII 200MHz on my home server and upgraded it’s memory to 256 MBytes.
There is also a brand new 1.2 GHz Celeron with 128 MBytes of memory, which is dedicated to DVD playing and other illegal activities :)
The topic of DVD playing is still new to me. I have found few projects on Freshmeat.net, including Ogle, xine, and Mplayer. For those happy Red Hat users, most of the above software is available in RPMs from FreshRPMs.net. I was also able to output DVDs and DivX to my TV using the instructions for Nvidia drivers. GeForce2 with TV-OUT easily does the job.
Meanwhile, it is nice to notice that while I was on holidays lots of people worked hard. I am very glad to discover announcements of Red Hat Linux 7.3, OpenOffice.org, Gnome 1.4 snapshot, and several other nice pieces of software in my mailbox. Congratulations to the developers!