I originally felt similarly to you as I thought it would be a real pain to build from sources and install.. however I found it very easy to build up a development linux box and build from sources... thus also allowing me to select the features I want in my system. Building a default system being what I did first back in January and then playing around a little from there.. but really to get myself up and running I did the following simple steps:
1] built up a fedora core 6 machine(i386 variant, astlinux devel crashes on x64), de-selecting all x-windows, no gnome, no KDE, and installing all development environments, legacy development, no web server, I did install FTP, SSHD, but no databases etc.. 2] added a regular user using useradd and set him a password. 3] su user - this switches you over to your new non-root account 4] cd /usr/src 5] svn co https://astlinux.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/astlinux/trunk astlinux-trunk The devel environment will be downloaded into a directory /usr/src/astlinux-trunk 6] cd astlinux-trunk 7] cp astlinux.config .config That copies the default config file Now lets build our devel environment with all the defaults just to make sure this thing will work... 8] make This begins the lengthy build process.. I have had this go real smooth except for on occasion the sha1sum files don't get downloaded correctly as the build occurs... so if I see a compiler error 1 where it could not verify a package don't panic.. you get dropped back to your command line and you can simply create an sha1 file for that package by doing this: A} cd dl B} sha1sum yourpackagehere-xx.xx.tar.gz > yourpackagehere-xx.xx.tar.gz.sha1 The main thing with that command is that you take whatever package failed the make verify.. and make sure the filename you use as the output file is the same as the input file just add a .sha1 to the end of it C} cd .. D} make This resumes the building of your astlinux... Once done you will have a directory called astlinux-trunk-xxxx this is where your new images are located. Not being sure which image you are running but assuming you are running on the newer runnix structure, loading up a new version couldn't be simpler... in my case my systems are not FULL production systems.. I am using the Neo Light (CV860a) boards for testing. And have a semi production system in my home. To load a new image you can power down, pull the flashcard out and drop it in your windows PC if you like... The 'os' directory will contain your images.. look at your existing astlinux-trunk-xxxx.run.conf file and simply change the version number in that file if you like. This way it will boot and run exactly the same as before... Then copy your new astlinux-trunk-xxxx.run file and its associated .sha1 file from your developer to the os dir on the flash, and finally copy the initrd.img file over to the os dir as well... now either rename the old files to something like astxxxxinactive and astxxxxinactivesha1 and initrdinactive with no . and nothing after.. they will stay there but not hurt anything.. or you can move them off entirely if you like... Put the flash card back in your machine, boot up and you are ready to rock N roll on your newly built system... Then you can get into the devel environment and select packages through the make menuconfig utility if you like to try and add or take things off.. this is how I do it and am getting better at it.... *** I'll let the mods comment and flame me for any in-accuracies I may have put in this little email as im a novice at the development environment... *** -Christopher -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Darren Grant Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 9:25 AM To: AstLinux Users Mailing List Subject: [Astlinux-users] Sorry I don't know what has happened to Astlinux. While I appreciate that Astlinux is a free Open Source offering I can't help but feel it has gone from something that was installable by the average Linux user to something that only an expert can now install. I don't have the understanding to checkout the source and compile it and then install it on my hardware. I have been waiting on this list for a couple of years now in the hope that there would be a new release with up-to-date asterisk on it that I could use, but nothing has been released. It seems I have the choice of running with an old very outdated system or learning how to compile one for myself. Astlinux seems to be going the way of OSCommerce under continuous development but no releases for the regular user. It is really sad, and I'm sure I will get flamed by people saying it is open source and that if I don't like it that is just too bad. But every other open software I use, Fedora, Apache, Drupal Open Ofiice etc all have regular packaged releases that can be easily installed by the average user making them so much more accessible. I like Astlinux and appreciate the effort put into it but I just wish it was more accessible to me. So I decided to just get a 8GB flash card and install a normal linux distro and Asterisk from an rpm. I wish you every success with Astlinux but if you want to grow the user base a lot more thought needs to go into making it more accessible with regular releases rather then continuous feature creep. Darren ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Astlinux-users mailing list Astlinux-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/astlinux-users Donations to support AstLinux are graciously accepted via PayPal to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Astlinux-users mailing list Astlinux-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/astlinux-users Donations to support AstLinux are graciously accepted via PayPal to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
