"John" == John Lange john.lange@open-it.ca writes:
John> Someone with some time on their hands might be interested in John> playing with this:
John> http://www.rpath.com/rbuilder/
John> Perhaps it could even be the subject of a MUUG meeting demo?
John> My understanding is the tool lets you build your own custom John> Linux distro (called a project) which you can then John> distribute as a complete appliance or whatever you like. If John> my assumptions are correct then it seems like a really cool John> idea.
It does look like it could be useful. Another approach which seems to be common at the moment is to modify some of the small (livecd/USB) distros, such as Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux.
I'm using the latter for a simple firewall, where it all runs in RAM after the initial CD load. One nice feature there is that you can optionally write filesystem changes such as config files to a new CD session, making it easy to update. When loading, it essentially merges the changes from each session on the disk, then keeps running in RAM from there. Being essentially diskless is nice if something unfriendly were to occur.
Tim