Newbie: Linux on CD - Can I mod it? 1

[Stevehewitt]

Hi everyone,

I'm a network admin at a .net web development house.

We need to create an offline demo of a website - which we can write in any cross-plaform language (other than Java). The demo website needs to be on a CD and work on all machines.

I haven't really done any proper work on Linux, but I do know that there are bootable CD's that work purely from a CD image and don't run on the HD at all.

If that's the case, could I take one of these CD / DVD images - install Apache and MySQL - put on our web application and then burn it back again. (Have it configured to log on automatically and open up the local website or something?)

Is this possible - and more importantly is it easy enough for a Linux newbie to do?

Thanks in advance,



Steve.

"They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson

 

[pansophic]

There are good instructions on how to "remaster" a KNOPPIX distribution. It isn't painless, but it is not beyond the capabilities of most computer professionals.

http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=2

http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Knoppix_Remastering_Howto

And you are in luck, Apache and MySQL are preinstalled on both the CD and DVD distributions of KNOPPIX, so theoretically you would just need to drop your data files in the correct places.

But you will need a lot of memory to run both applications and the OS. I would suggest that you run KNOPPIX in runlevel 3 (no graphical display) in order to reduce the memory requirements of the OS (leaving lots of space for Apache and MySQL).


pansophic

 

[franklin97355]

If you are creating a website that is cross platform why not just create the site and save that to the CD and then point the browser on the computer to the index file on the CD.

The answer is "42"

 

[zeland]

If you're really serious about it try Linux From Scratch.


--== Anything can go wrong. It's just a matter of how far wrong it will go till people think its right. ==--

 

[Stevehewitt]

Thanks all,

We can't just put the site onto a CD As we need the website to work on all machines it's used on. E.G. A Mac using Safari, Linux using Firefox and Windows using IE. In addition we also need to have a database installed as well.

Between the multiple languages we could use; we are very limited as to what ones we can use across multiple plaforms that will meet all of our needs. (database conectivity etc.)

Therefore instead of having a site in a lanugage that we are not particularly familiar with, and taking us months to do I suggested maybe a Linux CD with the site on it using Apache and MySQL.

Much appreciated everyone - thanks for your post.

Cheers,




Steve.

"They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson

 

[franklin97355]

E.G. A Mac using Safari, Linux using Firefox and Windows using IE. In addition we also need to have a database installed as well.

I'm not sure I understand. That is the whole idea behind HTML is that the browser takes care of the translation to the hardware. Your database will be on the server not the client and if you use a CD you won't be saving the data anyway.

The answer is "42"

 

[Stevehewitt]

Thanks.

We are a web services development house - primiarly in ASP.Net however we also develop in a number of other languages as well.

The client isn't the issue - it's the server. Normally we would run our application of a IIS 6.0 server with .Net Framework 2.0 and have SQL Server 2000 / 2005 installed local or on a server within the same network.

The problem is that we need to do this on a CD. Running a web server on a CD isn't possible to my knowledge - and we need a proper web server as pointing IE to a folder will not enable server side script to be processed. (E.G. ASP)

Thanks,




Steve.

"They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson

 

[pansophic]

Actually Stevehewitt, you may be able to use Bart's PE to build a Windows version of what you are trying.

The PE is the Preinstallation Environmnet that is used by Windows and diskcopy utilities to boot from CD and provide a working version of Windows. It is also customizable, but less flexible, IMHO, than KNOPPIX because of the way that Windows handles its hardware abstraction.

You should be able to build a Bart's PE disk that will work on a lot of machines (using generic video and network drivers) that would have IIS, .NET and SQL Server.

I recommended KNOPPIX based on your initial post of Apache and MySQL.

I assume that this concept is so that you can take iterative or test sites to a client's location and demo it for them on their systems without having to install anything.


pansophic

 

[smah]

There are many distros that run a web server (LAMP) right off the cd

http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php?pick=All&showonly=Server&sort=&sm=1

There are others as well, for example even though it's listed on that site as a desktop distro, slax also has a server version.