Launchpad Entry: ship-seed-for-mobile-images
Created: 2008-12-09
Contributors: Steve Kowalik, Emmet Hikory, Michael Casadevall
Packages affected: debian-cd
Summary
Currently, the Ubuntu MID images at least don't ship any extra packages that could be useful to bring up, for example, an esoteric network card. This specification defines what set of packages will be included in the image as .deb files (hence, not installed in the live environment) to help with this process.
Release Note
This image includes various tools available for installation for users who require them to complete the installation. Under normal cirmstances, you do not need these tools.
Rationale
Including .deb files in a pool in the Ubuntu MID image allows users that have special hardware or hardware that doesn't work out of the box to install packages without having to get networking work as a first priority.
Use Cases
- Alice wants to install MID on a board with a broadcomm wifi card, which requires the firmware to be extracted and placed in the firmware folder. She can grab b43-fwcutter, and install it in the Live enviornment to get the firmware.
- Bob is working to create a custom built MID device, and needs the compiler and toolchain to build drivers. he installs build-essential to build the module, or grabs LBM to get it from a newer kernel version.
- Chris is installing a MID without network support, and wishes to install language support for languages not in the live image.
Assumptions
- Assume the user knows how to use the tools on hand?
Design
- live seed are tools that are installed in the live environment image
- ship-live seed are tools we include in the liveCD seed, but are not installed by default
Implementation
UI Changes
- A clear UI to installing tools we have on ship-live, but don't install by default (make sure a graphical package manager at the very least is available
Proposed Seed Changes
- LBM (linux-backport-modules)
- langpacks (actually not, these are installed in the image, not additional
- debs) - English is, other languages like French and Japanese are not.
- Restricted drivers (hence build-essential)
- NDIS Wrapper
- OEM-Config
- b43-fwcutter
More generally, start from the set of software included on the Desktop LiveCDs, and add/remove as required post-implementation.
Seed Management
We can grow a little more (we're in the 500 MB ballpark and can grow a little), but the image should aim at being relatively small; we can add stuff which doesn't get installed by default, but you have around for convenience.
The initial implementation will include only a single seed for both mobile flavours. This decision may be revisited if there is significant divergence over time.
Test/Demo Plan
- Confirm the branch has the ship-live seed
Confirm the germinate output http://people.ubuntu.com/~ubuntu-archive/germinate-output/mobile.jaunty/ has the ship-live seeds listed, and that the output corresponds to the contents of the seed.
- Verify the ISO images for MID/UNR have the pool directory, and the contents is correct for the seeds
- Verify the CDs install from the local pool vs the network.
Unresolved issues
- Specific langpack selection for mobile images
- Assisted install support wizards for devices requiring additional software
BoF agenda and discussion
Ship seed defines what gets put into ship seed when we build images.
- LBM (linux-backport-modules)
- langpacks (actually not, these are installed in the image, not additional
- debs) - English is, other languages like French and Japanese are not.
- Restricted drivers (hence build-essential)
- NDIS Wrapper
- oem-config
- b43-fwcutter We can grow a little more (we're in the 500 MB ballpark and can grow a little), but the image should aim at being relatively small; we can add stuff which doesn't get installed by default, but you have around for convenience. Perhaps we should split the desktop live-ship seed into live-ship-common and use this for mobile (we don't need to add mobile specific packages right now).
=> ubuntu-devel@ discussion => we need to move the mobile STRUCTURE to point at ubuntu.$dist instead of
- platform.$dist