Introduction to umibuilder

  This documents umibuilder which is a good tool to make a memory disk or a Live
  CD based on Mandrake Linux for OpenBrick and other hardware.

  Overview

    umibuilder is an easy tool to prepare a memory disk or a Live CD
    based on Mandrake Linux for OpenBrick and other hardware, such as
    Sumicom barebone machines. Because it installs Mandrake Linux
    from the internet with security updates on the fly, it is very
    easy to keep your installation up-to-date and secure.

    umibuilder downloads the latest RPM packages from the internet,
    installing them into a local directory, removing unnecessary
    packages and files, customizing the installation, making OS images,
    formatting your memory disk, and making it bootable. These steps
    are all automatic, so all you need to do is wait for some minutes to
    finish.

    The idea behind umibuilder is to make it quite easy and fast to test
    new ideas of embedded appliances and share the knowledge base on the
    Internet. This is made possible by having a simple configuration file
    for each target in plain text format. For example, you can define a
    VPN (virtual private network) appliance target with umibuilder. For
    this target, you will simply have to create one simple text file which
    specifies what RPM packages to be installed, what files should be
    removed, which kernel to be used, and some shell commands to modify
    the contents dynamically as you wish. In addition, you can optionally
    have files which are merely copied, so you can add new files and
    overwrite existing files easily. This is very convenient when you want
    to replace configuration files statically without modifying official
    RPM packages.

    Also, you can add new hardware support into umibuilder. This is done
    only by a single text file again. For this, all you have to do is
    define kernel modules included in initrd and boot devices. Thus it
    is straightforward to support your own hardware and share the information
    with others using the umibuilder repository.

    You are encouraged to contribute to umibuilder. umibuilder is under the
    term of GNU General Public License (GPL), so we can develop and share
    knowledge on making good appliances using umibuilder in Open Source way.
    The CVS repository, which provides everyone the cutting-edge version of
    umibuilder, is open to all people who are interested in getting the latest
    version and adding new targets into umibuilder. We are looking forward to
    seeing your contribution to the CVS repository of umibuilder.

  Getting the latest version of umibuilder

    umibuilder is a part of "Umigumi" :http://umigumi.org/,
    which is Free Software to simplify the installation and the
    distribution of operating system installers.

    You can get Umigumi from
    "our CVS repository" :http://openbrick.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/umigumi/
    using your favorite web browser. Just click *Download tarball* and save it
    somewhere. Then, extract it on your Mandrake Linux machine::

    $ tar zxf umigumi.tar.gz
    $ cd umigumi

    That's it!

  How to make a compact flash for OpenBrick

    1. Insert a compact flash into your machine.

    2. Modify config/common.py to adapt the device name to your
       environment, if necessary.

    3. Run umibuilder like this as a superuser (root)::

      # ./umibuilder -ba vpn

    This example makes a VPN setup for OpenBrick. If you want to generate
    a TVBrick setup instead, you can do like this::

      # ./umibuilder -ba tvbrick

    You can check all supported setup targets by running::

      # ./umibuilder --help

  How to make an USB key for OpenBrick NG and Sumicom barebones

    This is quite similar to how to make a compact flash for OpenBrick in
    the above example. You need to only add one option to umibuilder::

      # ./umibuilder -w openbrick-ng -ba vpn

    With the option *-w*, you can specify the hardware to be used.
    All supported hardware types can be listed by::

      # ./umibuilder --help

  How to make a Live CD

    It is even possible to make a Live CD with umibuilder. All you need to
    do is add two options. One option is *-l*. This specifies a filename of
    a CD image. The other is *-d*, which specifies a device to be burned
    with the CD image. Here is an example::

      # ./umibuilder -l vpn.iso -d 0,1,0 -ba vpn

    The argument of the option *-d* is used by the program *cdrecord*.
    More information on this argument should be consulted in the manual
    of cdrecord.

  How to extend umibuilder

    FIXME