[SCM] Debian Live manual branch, master, updated. 20090201-1-2-g615d9ec

Daniel Baumann daniel at debian.org
Tue Feb 3 09:52:19 UTC 2009


The following commit has been merged in the master branch:
commit 6a827f07ff57da99b8031c47652bfbdd9965ba90
Author: Frederic Boiteux <fboiteux at calistel.com>
Date:   Tue Feb 3 10:49:31 2009 +0100

    Extending basic overview.

diff --git a/xml/chapters/basics.xml b/xml/chapters/basics.xml
index d5df3b8..4ffefab 100644
--- a/xml/chapters/basics.xml
+++ b/xml/chapters/basics.xml
@@ -11,6 +11,68 @@
 </para>
 
 <section>
+<title>What is a live system?</title>
+
+<para>A live system usually means an OS booted on a computer from a
+  removable support (as CD-ROM, USB stick, or network), ready to use
+  without any installation on the usual drive(s), with an
+  auto-configuration done at runtime.
+</para>
+
+<para>With Debian Live, it's a Debian GNU/Linux OS, built for one of
+  the supported architectures (currently amd64, i386, powerpc and sparc).
+  It is made from following parts:
+<variablelist>
+<varlistentry><term>a Linux kernel</term>
+<listitem><para>
+the Linux image, usually named <filename>vmlinuz*</filename>.
+</para></listitem>
+</varlistentry>
+
+<varlistentry><term>an initial RAM disk image (initrd)</term>
+<listitem><para>
+RAM disk setup for the Linux boot, containing modules possibly need to
+mount the filesystem's image and some scripts to do it.
+</para></listitem>
+</varlistentry>
+
+<varlistentry>
+<term>a system image</term>
+<listitem><para>
+The O.S. image. Debian Live uses a SquashFS image, a compressed
+filesystem, to minimize its size. Note that it's read-only, so during
+boot, the Debian Live system will uses RAM disk and 'union' mechanism
+to be able to write files on the system, but all modifications will be
+lost when shutdown, until using optional persistence partition(s)
+(see <xref linkend="persistence"/>).
+</para></listitem>
+</varlistentry>
+
+<varlistentry>
+<term>a bootloader</term>
+<listitem><para>
+A small piece of code, crafted to boot up from the chosen media,
+possibly proposing a prompt or menu to let select
+options/configuration, then loading the Linux kernel and its initrd to
+let it run with associated filesystem image. Different solutions can
+be proposed depending of the target media and fornat of filesystem
+containing the previous components: Isolinux to boot from a CD or
+DVD in ISO9660 format, syslinux for HDD or USB drive boot from a VFAT
+partition, GRUB for ext2/3 partition, pxelinux for PXE netboot...
+</para></listitem>
+</varlistentry>
+</variablelist>
+</para>
+
+<para>
+The Debian Live tools will build the system image from your
+specifications, setup a Linux kernel and its initrd, a bootloader to
+run them, all in one media-dependant format(ISO9660 image, disk image, ...).
+</para>
+
+</section>
+
+<section>
 <title>First steps: building an ISO image</title>
 
 <para>

-- 
Debian Live manual



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