AUFS approach¶

Goal¶

Goal of this project is to create a live USB flash drives that are easy to
update, allow users to boot new images downloaded from SUSE studio, allow them
to have persistent changes on these images, share common home directory and fit
as many images as possible.

How to achieve that? By modifying initrd and using stacking filesystem aufs.

Implementation¶

• images are compressed files stored on USB disk in one directory
  • currently ISO files from SUSE Studio are only supported format
• uses stacking filesystem - aufs
  • needs two extra patches in kernel
  • needs extra module
  • packages for 12.3 in home:-miska-:aufs
  • upstream is alive, looks maintainable
• we can start from default initrd with few modifications
  • replace modules
  • drop part that mounts and verifies DVD (section 7-10)
  • replace root mounting part (section 12)

Features & status¶

• can boot ISOs downloaded from SUSE Studio [done]
• can support multiple images [wip]
• can support persistent changes [todo]
• can support persistent home [todo]

Code done so far is on github

Related links¶

• comparison of compression methods
• using aufs + squashfs-xz for livecd