Complete newbie question re Knoppix customisation

[MattS]

I'm re-posting this from the General Support forum as per fingers99 instructions (a legitimate cross-post!!)

Hi,

First of all, let me make it clear that I know very little about Linux at all. That said, I work for a small company that resells a mobile data sychronisation package that is built on Fedora. The problem is that whenever a client wants an evaluation package, we have to send out a fully configured PC which as you can probably understand, is a bit expensive!

Having read up on Knoppix, I was wondering if you experts out there can help me out. There might even be some money in it for someone......

Basically I was wanting to know whether it would be possible to build a self-booting, Knoppix CD/DVD that could either run our application from the CD or alternatively automatically install knoppix and our app on a PC and have it scripted so it requires very little user input to get it up and working. Kind of like CheckPoints 'black CD' that you can simply throw into any old PC and it'll automatically turn it into a firewall.

Our current app is Java based and sits on JBOSS running on Fedora. It reads email from either a Microsoft Exchange server or Lotus Notes system and then pushes it out to mobile phones, kind of like Blackberry but ours works with mobile phones. It also accesses an LDAP or Active Directory server for user security credentials and stores phone and user configuration information in a MySQL database on the Linux machine.

I realise that due to the need to store variable information locally, this may not be an ideal scenario for a self-contained, bootable CD (but it would be fantastic if it could be accomplished). If this is the case, then the alternative is for a CD to be created that can automatically install a Linux OS and our application with the minimal of user input. I guess this will require quite a bit of scripting, buy hey, thats why I'm writing this to you experts!

If anyone out there is willing to help me, there could be some money involved, depending on how complex this is going to be. If you think you can help me, I can forward our current customer installation/configuration document which outlines everything that is needed to get our app up and working on a normal Fedora build. I can even make the binaries of our app available IF someone tells me that this is possible.

I would really appreciate any assistance possible.

Thanks.
Matt.

[id10t]

Why not spend just a little money, and include a USB disk-on-a-stick? On boot check to see if a "control" file is there (or has the right datestamp, md5sum, whatever), if it isn't, format the drive, extract the tarball to it, prompt for config info (point at their ldap/exchange/etc), save it the config, start services, start demo. If control file exists and is "proper" the just start services and demo.

[MattS]

Great. Do you want the job? As I said, I know what I need it to do, not how to achieve this. If you're interested, PM me or leave me a message here.

[0xf001]

hi,

i feel competent to do what you want. i have also allready remastered knoppix and bring it online soon (a reverse engineering knoppix with kernel mode debugger, disassemblers, and some more "tools of the trade" of the linux RE scene). i also include a self compiled kernel into knoppix, sata disk modules (new laptops need it, wifi modules, ...) just to give you a picture hehehe

please feel free to contact me via pm or email if you still need any help, suggestions, solution proposal, implementation or whatever

from a end users usage perspective i would go for the live cd approach, as probably ppl do not like to free a partition for an installation.

cheers, 0xf001

ps you might see http://home.pages.at/f001/index.html, http://www.rocksolid.at, http://lida.sourceforge.net, for more info about what i am doing, but i really think it is not a problem to implement your demo
when talking about the demo, if you want i can also help you with software protection - meaning copy protection, time trials, ... (utilizing sw/data encryption, anti disassembling, anti debugging, and all this stuff - especially if you want to choose the install approach)