Hi,

Good to hear that you like the SL mini_livecd. And thanks for the feedback!

I will try to answers some of your questions. Maybe I will come back
later with some more answers.

The initial idea of the mini_livecd was that it should fit on a real
Mini-CD (about 210MB). (I don't know, if you still can buy such Mini CDs?)
Because the RHEL RPMs tend to become bigger and bigger the SL53
mini_livecd will be around 285MB, which is still reasonable small, I think.

My plan is to release the SL53 LiveCD/DVDs end of this week. So I don't
want to change it too much. You find the RC of the mini_livecd in
http://www.livecd.ethz.ch/download/testing/53/i386/. Feel free to test it.



> >
> > ** Question #2: Urs, could the script be modified (e.g. for
> > mini_livecd_SL53) to accept a CLI parameter to specify the filesystem typ
> > e?
>   

Good idea. But maybe not for this release. As you have described in your
blog, it's possible to change the the script to make it work with xfs. I
will put this request on my todo list.

By the way, the LiveCD installer (livecd-install and livecd-install-gui
script) was a one-day hack. And of course it can be improved. I know
that other LiveCDs have a much fancier installer. To everybody: feel
free to contribute.



> >
> > ** Issue #2: Maybe I'm dumb, but the installed system was with autologin 
> > on
> > sluser. As I am not used with autologins under Linux, I pathetically fail
> > ed
> > to change this behavior. What should I have done? Can't this default
> > behavior be changed?
> >
>   

yes. 
I did this auto login feature some time ago. If I remember correctly,
you have to change the following things to disable it:

1. set default runlevel to 5. In /etc/inittab change "id:3:initdefault:"
to "id:5:initdefault:"
2. Install login manager, like gdm, if not yet done
2. in /etc/inittab set line to "6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6".
Remove "--autologin sluser"
3. in ~/.bashrc of root and sluser remove line "if [ "$( tty )" =
"/dev/tty6" ]; then startx; fi"
4. remove(?) ~/.xinitrc ~/.xsession for root and sluser?

I hope this is all. And no guaranty that's working. I guess I should
provide a simple script to disable it - it's on my todo list now.



> >
> > ** Question #3: Urs, as the mini_livecd is very small and light, could yo
> > u
> > make (a future version of it) more usable by adding nedit on it, especial
> > ly
> > that nedit is now provided by the TUV itself? (Nedit is only on the LiveD
> > VD.)
> >
>   

Maybe not for SL53 release. But why not creating an enhanced mini_livecd
later or release a second edition of SL53 mini_livecd later.

So, discussion is open. What should go to the mini LiveCD?

Your wishes are nedit, xfe, gqview and rxvt-unicode (and maybe mp3blaster)

May idea was not to have too many packages on the LiveCD which are not
part of SL. Since they will be never updated later, if the LiveCD is
installed or maybe even worse, they will break future updates of an
installed LiveCD.



> > and it's not clear to me from www.livecd.ethz.ch if I would have
> > whatever necessary (scripts, the step-by-step livecd building procedure) 
> > to
> > cook my own spin of something like mini_livecd_SL53.
>   

If you follow the instruction on http://www.livecd.ethz.ch/build.html,
it should be quite easy to build your own LiveCD. However, instructions
can be always improved  ;-) 


Cheers,

    Urs