Dyne:II GNU/Linux User's Guide
dynebolic.org
Jaromil
dyne.org / rastasoft / afrolinux
Copyright (c) 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Denis Rojo
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Table of Contents
1. The hacktive media
How to use this manual
This is Rasta software
Streamtime
Privacy and freedom of expression
License and disclaimer
2. Discover the system
Your desktop environment
Access your data volumes
Nest your home and settings
Install on harddisk? Dock!
Extra software modules
3. Install the medialab
Boot from harddisk
Boot from network
Boot from USB
Cluster computer farms
Keep your data safe
4. Video production
Configure your video devices
VeeJay
Play
Record
Edit
Stream
5. Audio production
Play
Perform
Record and edit
Stream
6. Graphical software
7. Text software
8. Communication software
Surf the web
Email and encryption
9. Development tools
Customize your dyne liveCD
Create new software modules
Index
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Chapter 1. The hacktive media
dyne:bolic GNU/Linux is a live bootable distribution working directly from
the CD without the need to install or change anything on harddisk. It can
recognize most of your hardware devices and offers a vast range of
softwares for sound and video production, streaming, 3d modeling, peer to
peer and filesharing, deejaying, veejaying and more.
This operating system focuses on providing multimedia functionalities to
surf, stream, record, edit, encode and broadcast both sound and video; it
also overcomes usual installation problems by providing an easy way to run
from harddisk without repartitioning, but just copying a directory
(docking), thus avoiding any risk of data loss and preserving the
integrity of other systems you are already using.
dyne:bolic it is made by and shaped on the needs of media activists,
artists and creatives to stimulate the production and not only the
fruition of digital and analog informations. Empowered by GNU/Linux and
the groovy open source software community, this operating system takes
birth as a grassroot effort to spread free software and the spirit of
sharing informations.
The latest version of this document is made available online at the
address dynebolic.org/manual and in printable format at
dynebolic.org/dynebolic-manual.pdf. For more informations visit the
homepage on dynebolic.org where more online documentation is made
available. To contribute you can report bugs and get in touch with the
community of users and developers joining the the discussion mailinglists
or the irc.freenode.net #dyne chat channel.
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How to use this manual
Far from being complete in exploring the possibilities of each single
software, you'll get introduced and find basic directions on how to use,
modify and employ dynebolic in various circumstances.
When in need of in-deep information on how to operate a particular
software, you should consult the included man pages.
The manpage is the name of the manual page describing usage of the
program, you can use it with the man command from an XTerminal inside
dyne:bolic :
[d:b] ~ # man hasciicam [Enter]
it will show an higly informative text about the usage of the program; the
manpage name usually matches the name of the program executable itself.
Always keep in mind: the man command is your friend :) it works in every
GNU/Linux system providing information about every command, and with all
the commands that are around there is a lot to discover! for example have
a look at manuals like "sox" or "convert", you'll find out that you can do
a lot of things just from the XTerminal commandline!
At last, in case you are using intensively a certain software for your
purposes, don't miss to consult its own documentation and join the
community of users around it: there you can discover more about its usage
and development.
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This is Rasta software
Jah Rastafari Livity bless our Freedom! This is free software, share it
for the good of yourself and your people, respect others and let them
express, be free and let others be free. Live long and prosper in Peace!
But, no Peace without Justice. This software is about Resistance inna
babylon world which tries to control more and more the way we communicate
and we share informations and knowledge. This software is for all those
who cannot afford to have the latest expensive hardware to speak out their
words of consciousness and good will. This software has a full range of
applications for production and not only fruition of information, it's a
full multimedia studio, you don't need to buy anything to express your
voice. Freedom and sharing of knowledge are solid principles for evolution
and that's where this software comes from.
Inna babylon, money is the main requirement to make a voice possible to be
heard by others. Capitalist and fundamentalist governments all around the
world rule with huge TV monopolies spreading their propaganda, silencing
all criticism.
This is a struggle for Redemption from existing operating systems which
always require new expensive hardware for doing the same as ever: give us
free players but make us pay for producing our own voices. And the one who
protects you rips you off, as the Arabs say.
Dyne:bolic is a tool to produce and publish yourself, freely. There is
nothing to consume here, there is all you need to create.
Commercial operating systems always give a possibility to listen - all
kinds of "free to download" players, but always with restrictions and no
easy way for everybody to speak out. The way communication is structured
follows the hierarchy of powers allready established in babylon's
mediascapes and, worst than ever, money is the main requirement to spread
a voice and let it be heard by others.
Neverthless, proprietary software spreads the dependence from business
companies thru the populace: whenever we share our knowledge on how to use
a certain software, we make the people in need to buy the tools from
merchants in order to express their creativity. This is great
responsability for anyone of us who teaches somebody how to do something
with software: the need to buy will be slavery under the merchantile
interests of capitalism.
The roots of Rasta culture can be found in Resistance to slavery. This
software is not a business. This software is free as of speech and is one
step in the struggle for Redemption and Freedom. This software is
dedicated to the memory of Patrice Lumumba, Marcus Garvey, Marthin Luther
King, Steve Biko, Walter Rodney, Malcom X; in solidarity with Mumia Abu
Jamal and all those who still resist to slavery, racism and oppression,
who still fight imperialism and seek an alternative to the hegemony of
capitalism in our World.
Hic Sunt Leones. And Much Blessings in Jah Luv to All Those who still
Resist. Selah.
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Streamtime
Employing dyne:bolic for the freedom of communication
Streamtime is a project of Radio Reedflute in collaboration with
Rastasoft, developed with artists and activists from Iraq and elsewhere.
Streamtime is a loose network of media activists dedicated to assist
autonomous networking. Streamtime uses old and new media for the
production of content and networks in the fields of media, arts, culture
and activism in crisis areas, like Iraq.
We imagine improvised expressive devices like a CD that turns your PC into
an on line streaming studio. Imagine a mob that creates a traffic jam.
Think of the religious policeman in London, the konfused kollege kid and
the jealous dentist in Baghdad and the jailed blogger blogging on in
Cairo. Building autonomous networks in extreme conditions.
Streamtime uses old and new media for the production of content and
networks in the fields of media, arts, culture and activism in crisis
areas, like Iraq. Streamtime offers a diffuse environment for developing
do-it-yourself media. We focus on a cultural sense of finding your own way
in the quagmire that is Iraq, and its representation in the global media.
We should not try to change politics in order to foster cultural change;
we should support cultural manifestation in order to force political
change.
Streamtime may take the form of a campaign, a work of collaborative art, a
current of unheard sounds, unspeakable words and unseen imaginations.
Remote interaction and ubiquitous dialogues, dematerialized communication
and participation on the streets. Space in its territorial, acoustic and
cybernetic dimensions is fragmented and recomposed realtime. Hacking codes
both moral and digital, forming new maps, mutant drawings and unstable
skins. Information overload can be abandoned in favor of consciousness and
collaborative practices. Memory has a digital, diverse, horizontal voice.
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Privacy and freedom of expression
The distinction between what is public and what is private is becoming
more and more blurred with the increasing intrusiveness of the media and
advances in electronic technology. While this distinction is always the
outcome of continuous cultural negotiation, it continues to be critical,
for where nothing is private, democracy becomes impossible (quote from
Privacy Conference, Social Research, New School University).
The internet offers plenty of free services, on the wave of the Web2.0
fuzz and the community boom, while all private informations are hosted on
servers owned by global corporations and monopolies.
We urge you to reflect on the importance of keeping privacy for personal
data. Our present world is full of prevarication and political
imprisonments, war rages in several places and media is mainly used for
propaganda by the powers in charge. Some of us face the dangers of being
tracked by oppressors opposing our self definition, independent thinking
and resistance to omologation.
People have the right to protect their privacy as much as their freedom to
express.
It is important to keep in mind that noone else than *you* can ensure the
privacy of your personal data. Server hosted services and web integrated
technologies gather all data into huge information pools that are made
available to established economical and cultural regimes.
Since version 2.4 in this free operating system was introduced support for
strong encryption of your /home private data with Linux dm-crypt i586
optimized Rijndael hashed SHA256, to provide an efficient and
user-friendly tool to protect your bookmarks, addressbook, documents and
emails by carrying them back with you, protected with a fairly strong
cryptographic algorithm.
A passkey to read your data is stored inside a file, which is also
protected by a password. It is possible to keep everything with you on a
small usb stick, still being sure that the data won't be easily recovered
in case you loose it. You can also give the passkey protecting your data
to a friend, to make the data unaccessible until you meet again, which can
be useful in case of tricky transports. You'll find more informations in
the following sections about nesting and privacy.
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License and disclaimer
The dyne user's manual is copyright (c) 2003 - 2007 Denis Rojo aka Jaromil
Thanks for reviewing and inspirations go to the Streamtime crew, all the
bloggers from Baghdad and any other crazy place in the world where people
like us happens to be living, has to live it, and can even find a way to
survive.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any
later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
Introductory and Colophon sections being invariant, with the Front-Cover
and Back-Cover Texts clearly stating authorship and copyright notices. You
should have received a copy of the GNU Free Documentation License along
with this manual; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59
Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
dyne:bolic GNU/Linux is copyright (C) 2001 - 2007 Denis Rojo aka Jaromil
Dyne:bolic is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be
useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General
Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the
GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the
Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA
02111-1307 USA
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Chapter 2. Discover the system
Your desktop environment
Dyne:bolic doesn't requires to install anything on your harddisks, which
can be left untouched while the system is used. Still, depending from your
preferred way to operate, it can boot from harddisk, CD, USB or network
(explained the following chapter) and it can store data in a single file
that can be transported across different media. The whole operating system
fits on a single CD, to run it from harddisk you just need to copy the
DYNE directory in it (see docking), while in a diskless thin-client setup
that can also be mounted via network. This makes dyne:bolic very easy to
be employed and mantained, while there is no risk for misconfiguration:
the system comes as it is, providing a slick desktop full of applications
ready to use.
The default desktop manager is Xfce, it offers you multiple desktops (try
ctrl+F2 and other numbers) and a menu that you can recall by clicking the
right mouse button on the background. On the upper right corner you have
your storage devices which you can access with a click.
Inside the application menu software is organized by tasks, so you can
easily find your way to play, record, edit and stream both audio and
video, communicate and publish text, webpages, 3d animations and much
more.
Click on CONFIGURE in your menu to access system configuration facilities
and customize your system.
To be introduced to various desktop functionalities you can visit Spot's
homepage and read the OSNews dyne:bolic review.
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Access your data volumes
You can easily access your files on connected storage devices (harddisks,
cd, floppy, usb) using the buttons in the upper right corner of your
desktop, as well your local network shares and remote internet accounts.
Your partitions are automatically mounted in the /mnt directory, which you
see linked in your home as Volumes. You can read and write on all your
volumes except for NT filesystems, which you can only read.
Usb storage devices (like usb pens, smartcards and some digital photo
cameras) can be opened simply with a double click on the usb symbol. But
beware that sometimes unusual partition schemes can confuse the
autodetection, so you can try by hand in a Xterminal issuing manual
commands:
[d:b] ~ # mount /dev/sdXY /mnt/usb [Enter]
Where you must substitute X with letters (a,b,c...) and Y with numbers
(1,2,3) for example /dev/sda2.
If you have only one cdrom or dvd player on your computer with docking you
can have it free for use after booting dyne:bolic (see following chapter
about DOCKING), then you can access, browse, play and rip compact discs
and dvd.
To have a general overview about the organization of various directories
you find in GNU/Linux systems, read the manual hier (type "man hier" in
the Xterminal).
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Nest your home and settings
By default your /home, /etc and /var directories reside in RAM memory:
every file and configuration you save will not be there again at the next
boot. To save your home and settings permanently you need to create a
NEST: it is just a file called "dyne.nst" that can be placed on a harddisk
or usb storage device and it loaded at every boot. You just need to create
your nest once, dyne:bolic looks for it at every startup and if it is
present starts using it automatically.
The nesting function is very practical to keep all the modifications you
make to the system while using it (settings, saved files, accounts,
language, private data etc.) and transport or backup them. For example, in
case you nest on your USB stick, you can boot with it connected at
startup, then that nest will be used and all your /home and settings will
always stay with you, in your personal USB stick. This way you don't even
need a laptop to travel around with your software environment and data,
just carry a dyne:bolic CD and your nested USB stick with you, wherever
you'll be able to boot it you'll have your /home.
How to create a nest? at the boot screen or in your Home, click on the
Configure button, then choose Nest (the little icon of a duck). You will
be prompted to create a nest on your harddisk or USB stick, proceed
choosing the partition you want and how big you need it: good sizes may
vary between 250 and 500 megabytes, depending from how much you plan to
use the system, modify it and open it for other users.
Since version 2.4 when creating a nest you'll also see a padlock button:
press it and your new nest will be secured with encryption, you'll be
asked to set a password, which will be then asked at every boot when you
mount the nest. Without that password it will be very hard to access your
nest, so you'll be granted with fairly good security for your personal
data.
If you nest on harddisk, the supported partition formats are: Dos, Fat32,
Ext2, ReiserFS, Beos (BeFS), and NTFS (supported since version 2.5). The
nest is just one file created in the /dyne directory at the root of your
partition (C:\ or D:\ in the DOS filesystem) called dyne.nst. To erase a
nest simply delete that file.
Since version 2.5 it is also possible to mount nests after boot: just plug
in your usb stick and navigate the content of the dyne/ directory, a
double click on the dyne.nst (the duck icon) will mount your home and
prompt for a password if it is encrypted.
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Install on harddisk? Dock!
Dyne:bolic solves the problem of istallation in a very simple way: there
is no installation :) you simply copy a directory and this is called
"docking".
Docking lets you run the system from an harddisk, with shorter load time
and more speed. With a dock you can also boot from floppy, or from a
multi-boot partition.
Docking consists of copying the dyne/ directory from the CD to the
harddisk. You don't need to change anything in your partition, just copy a
directory into it: drag the dyne/ folder from the CD on the icon of your
harddisk, that's it! It will occupy less than 700 megabytes of space.
After 'docking', you can boot with the CD inside and it will eject
automatically after the first phase of the boot process, this is the sign
the dock went well! Like that, even without the need for repartitioning or
configuring a double boot, you can just switch to dyne:bolic using a CD or
a floppy, but still run it from harddisk at full speed, like an installed
operating system - and even better! ;)
Of course when you want to remove the dock is easy: just delete the /dyne
directory in your harddisk!
Remember that docking is different from nesting: Docking is done to run
the system and all application from harddisk instead of CD, nesting is to
store your home and settings in a single file on harddisk or usb storage.
More online information about docking is available on the wiki community
pages.
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Extra software modules
Dyne:II offers the possibility to be expanded using .dyne modules:
collections of applications that can be easily installed and used. In fact
the basic system already contains some of these modules, that can be found
in your dock as the dyne/modules/ directory. From the menu, you can see
them clicking thru CONFIGURE -> DYNE -> MODULES
Additional dyne modules are available online on the dynebolic.org homepage
in the Extras section. Download and activate them just dropping the .dyne
files into the dyne/modules docked directory. Then reboot, that's it!
Users can easily keep their modules across different machines, always
finding back the software they need. Modules can also be used thru
different dyne versions: just update the core dock and then drop in your
good old modules.
Download free and open source dyne modules online from
ftp://ftp.dyne.org/dynebolic/modules, there are many interesting
extensions already: office and development tools, crosscompile chains,
manuals and of course games :)
Quite some developers and artists are actively contributing with modules
listed on
http://lab.dyne.org/DyneModules.
When you install new modules, since it is so easy, the only care that must
be taken is their provenience, since a broken or malicious module can
access all your system. Of course to install a module you must be root. On
our website we'll suggest only modules we have tested, anyway you're free
to choose, it's all up to you to decide whom you trust, you just did it by
running this system on your computer didn't you? :)
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Chapter 3. Install the medialab
This chapter will describe various advanced uses of the dyne:bolic system:
how to cluster multiple computers to take advantage of shared resources,
how to make the system resident on various computers in a medialab and how
to keep your data safe from intrusions into your privacy.
The knowledge provided by this chapter requires some basic confidence with
GNU/Linux systems and the use of the text console terminal. It will
empower you with the ability to flexibly setup fully operational medialabs
even using found computers, but you need to plan well the architecture of
your resources depending from your specific situation.
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Boot from harddisk
With docking we saw that simply moving a directory in the root of a
partition can let us boot from CD and run from harddisk. This is a very
simple and safe way to have a dual-boot system: Cd in for dyne:bolic, CD
out for anything else. Still some people really likes to get rid of the
CD, so here it is explained how.
Keep in mind that the following operation is not necessary to run
dyne:bolic from harddisk. If you are not familiar with boot sectors and
partition geometry you might need the intervention of an expert when
anything goes wrong. Furthermore, in case of a mistake you might delete
all the data stored on your harddisks and/or be left without the
possibility to boot back into your old operating system.
In order to boot from harddisk you need a bootloader (Lilo or Grub)
installed. We recommend the use of Grub for its simplicity and
flexibility: in fact that is the default bootloader dyne:bolic will
install for you, but in case you have Lilo already installed and you don't
want to change it, then there is also a way to add a dyne:bolic entry to
it.
The following instructions will cover various situations: you can omit
some operations in case your computer is already setted up with them.
In case you are installing a computer from scratch, without anything
installed on it yet, then you need to partition the harddisk and format
it. You can do so using the command cfdisk to create or modify your
harddisk partitions, then mke3fs to format the partitions (or other mk*
commands in case you desire to use a different filesystem than Ext3).
Beware that this operation above will erase all the data on the disk.
Once you have a disc partitioned and formatted you need to install the
bootloader. To do this use the command grubconfig and follow the steps you
are prompted, at the end of the process you will be able to boot your
computer directly into dyne:bolic, without the need to use a CD.
To re-configure your bootloader (not necessary if you installed one from
scratch using dyne:bolic) go look into your harddisk partitions, in case
you have a directory boot/ see if inside there is another directory called
grub/, if yes there you found your grub configuration, a simple text file
called grub.conf or menu.lst which you have to edit by hand, adding a few
lines at the bottom in order to add dyne:bolic among the boot menu
selection:
title dyne:bolic RASTASOFT Afro Linux
root (hd0,0) # ADJUST THIS!
kernel /dyne/2618ck1d.krn root=/dev/ram0 rw load_ramdisk=1 max_loop=64 vga=791
initrd /dyne/initrd.gz
After doing that you'll need to set the harddisk where you have docked:
where it says "ADJUST THiS" change the (hd0,0) if necessary: hd0,1 for
hda2 - hd0,2 for hda3 - hd1,0 for hdb1 and so on... trying wrong values is
not dangerous and in case you are confused there is a lot more
documentation about this process in the grub manual pages.
In case you have installed lilo, search among your harddisk partitions for
the directory etc/ and then inside for the lilo.conf file, if found then
add the following lines at the end of it:
image = /dyne/2618ck1d.krn
root = /dev/ram0
append = "max_loop=64"
initrd = /dyne/initrd.gz
label = dyne
read-write
vga = 791
Being sure that the /dyne directory is inside the partition you boot,
which in lilo is configured by the boot = /dev/hd* usually at the
beginning of the lilo.conf file. Please note the "image =" parameter takes
a full path to the kernel file, which is named after it's version in a
condensed form, for instance here 2618ck1d stands for 2.6.18-ck1-dyne .
The condensed format is necessary for a 8.3 filename restriction of the
isolinux CD boot system.
Happy hacking ;)
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Boot from network
Network booting is supported on some personal computers: the PXE system
was included on some BIOS already at the beginning of year 2000 (rough
estimation): if no harddisks or cd devices are found to boot, the first
black screen of the computer will search for a PXE boot on the local
network.
When booting PXE looks for a DHCP server on the local network for an
address assigned. When found it will connect via TFTP to receive the
kernel and the ramdisk from that server or another one.
To start a TFTP server distributing the current docked dyne:bolic system,
it is enough to run this command in a terminal:
[d:b] ~ # tftpd -l -s $DYNE_SYS_MNT [Enter]
You can also configure a DHCP server to provide the network addresses to
any PXE client booting. To do that use the graphical program gdhcpd
starting it from a terminal, or the sample configuration file in
/etc/dhcpd.conf. See man dhcpd for a reference to how to launch and
operate the DHCP daemon.
For more informations see man tftpd and man dhcpd.
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Boot from USB
The following instructions explain how to make a usb storage device (like
usb stick) bootable with grub and install dyne:bolic on it so that you can
run it from USB, without harddisk or CD.
If you are looking for instructions on how to save your personal data on a
USB stick, then this is not the right place: look at Nesting. If you're
looking to copy the entire system over to your harddrive, again, this is
not the right place, look at Docking. This section documents on how to put
the whole system on the usb stick.
The whole system requires a USB device about the size of the /dyne
directory (currently ~655MB at version 2.4.2) + ~30MB (for file system
headers). Therefore, the entire system should fit on a USB stick of
~685MB, but you may want a bit more space for your personal files. If your
USB stick is smaller try Nesting instead.
How DyneII loads (technical):
the boot system consists of a bootloader, in our case grub
the bootloader loads a kernel, in our case linux :)
the kernel loads a ramdisk, in our case dyne:II initrd.gz
the ramdisk will look for a dyne/ dock
we keep both kernel and ramdisk in a dock and install grub
First of all find what device your USB drive is
[d:b] ~ # cat /proc/partitions [Enter]
Ignore the entries that end in numbers, those are individual partitions on
each separate device. The ones that end in letters are different devices:
hda means your primary IDE harddrive, sda (or sdb sdc etc.) generally
means a USB device (but can also mean a SCSI or SATA harddisk, be sure to
verify this on your specific system configuration)
If you're confused, look at the blocks column, which shows the # of 1KB
blocks on the device. If you know how big your USB stick is, you can find
it this way. ~1,000,000 blocks = a 1 gigabyte device; ~64,000 blocks =
64MB device. From here on this tutorial assumes your usb device is
/dev/sda, if it's not /dev/sda, change it as necessary.
Now let's prepare the partitions of the usb key: in this example we are
using the console based cfdisk here, but you can also try to use Parted
which is a graphical tool in MENU->FILES->Parted. Be careful that you
selected the right device to operate on (eventually different from the
/dev/sda in the examples below) because from now on the operations
described will erase all data on the device.
Let's start the partition tool:
[d:b] ~ # cfdisk /dev/sda [Enter]
Now from inside cfdisk:
delete all partitions
create a new primary at the default maximum size
set the type to 83 (Linux)
Write everything and then Quit
Now you are ready to format your drive:
[d:b] ~ # mke2fs /dev/sda1 [Enter]
You can change the above command mke2fs -j in case you want to use EXT3
instead of EXT2. However, it is probably not advised to use the EXT3
journaled filesystem on a flash/USB device: journaling writes to the disk
more often than necessary, which wears out the USB device more quickly.
Use a non-journaled filesystem such as EXT2 (Linux only) or FAT32 (if you
want to make your usb device readable outside of Linux). The default
(ext2) is a safe choice, however, you may want to read up on journaled vs
non-journaled file systems and make an informed decision in your case.
Now mount the drive:
[d:b] ~ # mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb [Enter]
And Install the bootloader (grub):
[d:b] ~ # grubconfig [Enter]
Select the correct usb device, generally the last item in the list. Note
that if all the items in the list start with hda the computer you're
currently using can't be booted from a usb device and you'd be installing
grub to a partition of your harddrive instead.
Now copy the dyne/ dock directory from your current system
[d:b] ~ # mkdir /mnt/usb/dyne [Enter]
[d:b] ~ # rsync --inplace -Pr $DYNE_SYS_MNT/* /mnt/usb/dyne/ [Enter]
Rsync is better than cp and we have a progressbar for this operation,
which will take quite some time, depending if you have a USB 1.0 or 2.0
connection.
It should be all ready at this point, so try booting your USB device on a
computer which supports USB booting. If it works, great! If not, open your
/boot/grub/menu.lst (on the USB device) and change the root(...) line from
(hd0,0) to (hd1,0).
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Cluster computer farms
Since version 2, dyne:bolic changes its approach to clustering
implementing a "human driven" suite of tools that let you control various
applications running on multiple computers connected to your network.
In situations where you have many old computers you can use one for each
task and control all of them from the same keyboard and mouse. The
desktops of the computers can be visualized on your own screen or on
multiple screens in case you have monitors attached to each of them.
Powerful workstations can be combined using multiple processing units and
their displays can be tiled together to compose a unique wide desktop.
This way to operate dyne:bolic computers involves different kinds of
applications offering a flexible setup that you can customize to your
needs. This part of the manual will just make you familiar with the tools
and you'll need to refer to their manuals to discover all the potential.
To connect multiple computers you should first make sure you can reach
them over the network and you know their addresses. A simple way to do it
that will work on every GNU/Linux system is using the command ifconfig on
each computer to print out the currently configured network address:
[d:b] ~ # ifconfig | grep inet [Enter]
then edit your /etc/hosts file with the full list of addresses and a name
for them that you can choose. Copying the /etc/hosts file on all involved
machines will make them aware of each other "hostnames".
Synergy is a powerful tool that lets your keyboard and mouse control
different desktops accessed simply moving the mouse out of the current
screen into theirs. An example configuration file is provided in
/etc/synergy.conf and it must be modified with the hostnames of your
computers (to be associated to IP numeric addresses in /etc/hosts).
The main computer where the keyboard and mouse are attached should run the
command:
[d:b] ~ # synergys -n hostname -c /etc/synergy.conf [Enter]
All the other computers to be connected should run this command, making
sure the config file include them in the setup:
[d:b] ~ # synergyc -n hostname -c /etc/synergy.conf [Enter]
VNC is a remote video client that lets you control the desktop of another
computer on your network as inside a window on your current desktop. It
can be also used to interact with two mouse and keyboard at the same time.
To share the desktop of a computer for an incoming VNC connection just
run:
[d:b] ~ # x11vnc [Enter]
To connect to a computer sharing the VNC desktop:
[d:b] ~ # vncviewer computer [Enter]
For more informations on VNC see man x11vnc and man vncviewer.
Remote X execution lets you run an application on another computer and
control it on your desktop, as if it would be running locally.
In order to authorize other computers to open applications on your desktop
you must first run the command:
[d:b] ~ # xhost +computer [Enter]
Then Click the network button on the top-right panel and run Exec_X11,
fill in your user account (default is user:root password:luther) and write
the command to start the application.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Keep your data safe
Dyne:bolic is developed with your privacy in mind: as mentioned before the
NEST can be encrypted to make your private data unaccessible unless your
password is provided, now we'll proceed to analize in deep all the aspects
of this security measure.
When an encrypted nest is created, every file you place in your home
directory will be preserved in a scrambled form using a Rijndael/SHA256
algorithm: such a cypher can be considered very secure, maybe some
military organizations are able to break it, but anyway that would be very
expensive in terms of resources employed.
Dyne:bolic encryption mechanism employes a passfile "dyne.nst.gpg" which
contains the cypher used to protect your data: that file holds the
password that, matched together with your dyne.nst file, can access all
the data you store in your nest. So actually that file is very precious
for your privacy, you should be careful and not copy it around.
Since the passfile is so delicate, it is also protected with a password:
the one you choose at the beginning, which is used to scramble the
passfile through a CAT5 algorithm. Keep in mind that this cypher algorithm
is weak and eventually, in case an intruder takes possession of your .gpg
passfile, it will be easy to crack.
Now in practical terms all this encryption scheme means that you can
safely move around your dyne.nst file separated from the dyne.nst.gpg
passfile: there will be no intrusion in the data stored inside even in
case you loose it. It also means that you can give your passfile to a
friend, still protected by the password you memorized, so that neither you
nor your friend will be able to access the nest until you meet up again.
More in general, this scheme lets you separate your encrypted data from
the passfile, still keeping everything sealed by the password you keep in
mind, and move the data around in different places being sure meanwhile
it's not accessed by anyone else.
So for sure we can say our privacy protection is way above the usual
schemes used in most common operating systems, which keep your data in
clear and physically accessible.
In case you are involved in some mission critical task and you are facing
the possibility of imprisonment and torture, you should take a bit more
care. A good practice would be to customize a bit the startup scripts of
dyne:bolic to have a false password prompt, the /lib/dyne/nest.sh script
is a good start. Another way can be to have an encrypted nest for which
you would disclose the password if forced to, but then also another
encrypted file hidden somewhere that is not prompting for a password at
every boot.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 4. Video production
Play, record, edit and stream your video
Play, record, edit and stream your video
The GNU/Linux platform nowadays offers an interesting range of tools for
video production, editing and manipulation; you can play all kind of video
files and DVDs, but also encode them for distribution and switch between
formats. Furthermore, you'll find software for recording, veejaying and
streaming, non-linear editing and subtitling.
However, you should consider that most of the video tools running on
GNU/Linux platform are in development: indeed you can help much in testing
and reporting the bugs you encounter, that's how anyone can help free
software to grow better and better, as it does.
Now lets proceed on how to configure an available video device and then
browse thru the video software included in dyne:bolic, following a
subdivision in task categories.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Configure your video devices
There are various devices that can be used on PC computers in order to
have video input: USB webcams and capture cards, PCI TV cards, Firewire
and even parallel port. They all have different chipsets and manufacturers
and need different Linux device drivers.
Dyne:bolic is capable to automaticly recognize most PCI (internal) TV
cards at boot time (WinTV, BTTV) and now also USB webcams as well Firewire
controllers: they will all be initialized at boot and can be accessed from
the video device /dev/video0 or subsequent numbers (video1, video2 ..) in
case you have more than one.
If your video device is not recognized automatically (the /dev/video
doesn't exists) then you need to configure it by hand. In case of USB
webcams, if your is not recognized automatically a good place to look for
hints is the linux-usb website. Also the Spot's guide about rolling your
camera is a good place to visit for more informations on how to proceed.
If the online documentation says your device is supported by a particular
kernel driver, you can try to load it using the command 'modprobe
modulename' and see if everything went well by looking in the last lines
of the messages printed out by the dmesg command. Many modules are already
present in dyne:bolic, but some might require to be compiled using the
kernel sources, which is a more complicated process that can't be
explained here: you'll need to find more instructions online about how to
do it and download the dyne:II kernel sources using dyneSDK (see the
DEVELOPMENT chapter about it).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
VeeJay
The VeeJay applications implement a pioneeristical approach to video
manipulation in realtime, taking advantage of the high computational power
offered by personal computers nowadays. If you're active in the field of
media and visual art, dance or scenografy, this software can be
interesting and sometimes very useful to your research.
FreeJ is a vision mixer: an instrument for realtime video manipulation
used in the fields of dance teather, veejaying, medical visualisation and
TV.
FreeJ lets you interact with multiple layers of video, filtered by effect
chains and then mixed together. Controllers can be scripted for keyboard,
midi and joysticks, to manipulate images, movies, live cameras, particle
generators, text scrollers, flash animations and more. All the resulting
video mix can be shown on multiple and remote screens, encoded into a
movie and streamed live to the internet.
FreeJ can be controlled locally or remotely, also from multiple places at
the same time, using its slick console interface; can be automated via
javascript and operated via MIDI and Joystick. Especially the javascript
interpreted makes it an easy to learn language to make your first step in
the wornderful world of programming.
More documentation on freej can be found in /opt/video/share/freej
especially the scripting reference. A user friendly tutorial can be found
online, and more information at its homepage on freej.dyne.org.
Other tools included in dyne:bolic are useful to be employed in different
ways on realtime video: EffecTV can apply realtime effects to images, one
by one, realizing "distortion mirrors" and other possible funny uses; Xaos
can let you explore the psychedelical word of chaos mathematics and
fractals :)
A remarkable piece of software is Pure Data which together with various
extensions realizes a tool to connect various processing units in a visual
scripting fashion, to create visionary audio machines and interactive
video tools. Pure Data, also called PD, is as powerful as complicated to
learn; it helps the fact that is getting now adopted by various media-art
schools around the world as a free and open source for students to realize
their projects. From the wide community of digital artists and creatives
using it in all kinds of interactive installations and performances, the
Goto10 crew joined the development of dyne:II to implement the pure.dyne
software module which provides you everything you need to start using Pure
Data right out of the box, without installation problems: check their
website at
http://puredyne.goto10.org to download a copy and add it to
your dyne:bolic system.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Play
Players are provided to playback various video formats as AVI, MPEG, DIVX
and WMV files, signals from TV cards or Quicktime, RTSP and HTTP live
streams from the net. At the time being, dyne:bolic is compatible with
most of the video formats around: thanks to MPlayer, Xine and FFMpeg free
software you have chances to view files otherwise unsupported by other
proprietary systems. Xine is recommended for watching DVDs, while Xawtv is
a fully featured television viewer. Mplayer will be used to playback
videofiles whenever you'll doubleclick one in the file manager (to close
mplayer then you have to press 'q').
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Record
Video recording is supported using a vast number of devices: from TV/video
card and DVD using MEncoder, a commandline tool to be used from an
XTerminal, a bit complicated but very powerful, see it's manual. An
user-friendly interface for DV acquisition via firewire is provided by
Kino; while XawTV supports all other types of video devices and can be
good to check if your is recognized as it has the widest support for
hardware.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Edit
Inside dyne:bolic you'll find Cinelerra, which implements a common
approach to non-linear editing, with a nice user interface, speed and
responsiveness.
You can be introduced to Cinelerra by the manual available on
manual.cinelerra.org or this online tutorial.
Also AviDeMux is a useful tool for quickly cutting video, supports even
more input formats than Cinelerra and can be used to convert between some
formats and do simple editing tasks.
Consider that video editing tasks are the most demanding, so you'll need a
relatively fast computer (from 2004-2005) in order to achieve decent
interactivity and satisfactory results.
For converting between video formats its included the powerful Transcode
tool, which is a commandline application that can be scripted to convert
large number of files or easily accessed via a graphical interface.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Stream
Streaming video can be easily setted up in three different ways: using
Mpeg4IP, FreeJ or HasciiCam.
With Mpeg4IP you'll stream in Mpeg4 format and you'll need an online
server running Darwin broadcast software, the resulting stream can be
watched with most video players available today on various platform. This
method provides good quality and smooth framerate, can record while
streaming, efficiently uses bandwidth when running on multicast and can
stream audio synced with the video. It's drawbacks are that it can be hard
to find or setup a broadcast server, slower machines can't stream neither
play it (cpu intensive).
With FreeJ you can combine different video sources, apply effects and
overlay text, put transparent images and even more, then all the resulting
stream can be live encoded with the free Theora codec and sent to an
Icecast2 server online, this way anyone will be able to take your stream
from the internet and play it back for example using the VideoLan player
available for all computer platforms. The capability of mixing and
effecting the video realtime is a unique feature of FreeJ, but the
drawback can be the initial difficulty you can encounter in mastering the
program, which has to be started with particular flags from an XTerminal
in order to activate the streaming functionality. To find out more about
it see the previous section about VeeJaying and check the Streaming with
FreeJ documentation online. In dyne:bolic you will find an example script
to stream in /opt/video/share/freej
Hasciicam is Rasta software, the first one Jaromil ever published (2000),
distributed by dyne.org. It is capable of rendering a video into text,
having letters in place of colors, filling up the image as a greyscale
palette. With such an encoding the images look way less detailed, but
pretty cool, and the stream uses very low bandwidth: Hasciicam can upload
video via ftp to a server and can be viewed directly from any web browser
(also text based) - so it can work to provide a video stream even using
very old computers, and adds a special bit to it: the ASCII chars. As
drawbacks here we have that the video is formed of characters: nifty, but
doesn't gives a clear picture, it is just monochrome and can't achieve a
smooth framerate on movement. For more informations on how to use see man
hasciicam.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 5. Audio production
Play, record edit and stream your audio
Play, record edit and stream your audio
This distribution is full with audio software to do all kind of things:
electronic music, sound processing, voice effects, interviews and more.
And there is one important thing that makes this system superior to any
other commercial solution: there is no competition :)
Most of the audio applications in dyne:bolic can be connected together,
input to output, in order to form a chain of tools processing the sound:
this is done thanks to a technologies like JACK and the Advanced Linux
Sound Architecture. Instead of keeping separated the tasks of every single
application, now it is possible to take advantage of the great variety of
approaches that a GNU/Linux system like dyne:bolic has to offer.
This revolutionary approach will surely pay you back the effort to be
introduced to its use, a good starting point is the Spot perspective on
technology at
http://spot.river-styx.com/viewarticle.php?id=14 and
http://spot.river-styx.com/viewarticle.php?id=17.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Play
This operating systems provides players for many audio formats available
around out of the box: WAV, MIDI, MP3, OGG / VORBIS, MOD, XM, FLAC, SPEEX
and even more can be played out or re-encoded, switching between formats.
The Xmms player is a practical audio player with a minimal and intuitive
playlist manager, can play online radio streams and local files and can be
skinned or customized with plugins as you like.
Amarok is a fully featured personal jukebox, handling the collection of
your audio and downloading automatically printable lables and lyrics of
your favourite music. Let it explore your collection of audio so that it
will let you search for keywords, memorize your preferences and guess
playlists out of your favourite music. It makes it a perfect interface for
a jukebox station!
Timidity is a midi synthetizers using GUS patches to render your MIDI
files into audio files, as well make you listen to MIDI partitures.
MikMod is a tracker module player (file extensions as MOD, XM, S3M etc.)
which can let you listen to demo-scene prods, video game music and what's
commony called "chip tunes".
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Perform
This section includes software to produce live music, interacting in
realtime with the applications that generate sound out of microphone,
midi, keyboard and mouse inputs. All this software requires Jack to work
properly, so that it can be interconnected in a chain of programs, like a
virtual rack of different applications.
Hydrogen is a drum-machine where you can load sample kits of instruments
and compose a partiture for them to play on a specific rythm. It's
homepage offers a collection of many more drum kits you can download, go
to
http://www.hydrogen-music.org.
Jamin is the Jack audio mastering interface, it can perform professional
audio mastering of stereo input streams, equalizing signals with an
intuitive and advanced interface to shape all frequencies in realtime.
Jack Rack is a powerful effect rack that can apply chains of audio plugins
(LADSPA) on the sound currently being played by other programs. Using Jack
you can interface it with all other performance tools and add one of the
more than 200 effects available in dyne:bolic.
FreeWheeling is a funky application that lets you record and play multiple
samples in realtime, so that they stay looping and can be overlayed one
after the other: is a fresh tool to manipulate, sum and and create over
recorded sounds, but requires you to read some instructions before start
using it, since it's all controlled via keyboard (and, optionally, midi).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Record and edit
This version of dyne:bolic comes with up to date software to record and
manipulate audio: it is generally more stable and feature rich than the
previous, so you'll hopefully notice the improvements while using it.
Ardour is the fully featured multitrack studio that offers the most
advanced interface for your music recording studio. Combined together with
other applications when necessary (it also uses Jack) it can really solve
all your needs for audio mastering and music production. Check the online
documentation for this valuable software on Ardour homepage: if you are a
musician, the patience needed to learn it's usage and hotkeys is
definitely worth the effort.
Audacity is a user-friendly audio editing program suitable to manipulate
your audio files, interviews and recordings, separating or mixing them,
applying effects and encoding in various formats. It can also be used to
record audio straight away via its intuitive interface, which can be
commonly found also on other operating systems since it is a
cross-platform free application. A perfect choice to start manipulating
audio.
Rezound is a well capable sample editor that lets you manipulate with good
precision your music samples, record, loop and apply effects using an
intuitive and complete interface, quite responsive also on slower systems.
TimeMachine is a simple yet very useful tool for recording audio,
requiring Jack as a sound engine. It is simply a big red button: when you
press it it will start recording starting from 10 seconds ago, so that you
can record what you find interesting in an audio input just while
listening. Whenever you press it records what you just listened, without
the need to rewind the tape.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Stream
MuSE is another rasta soft by dyne.org included, which lets you stream
audio on the internet over various servers (Icecast, Darwin and Shoutcast)
in MP3 or OGG format, so that listeners will be able to listen to your
voice and music connecting with most available sound players around.
MuSE can mix up to 6 encoded audio bitstreams (from files or network, mp3
or ogg) plus a souncard input signal, the resulting stream can be played
locally on the sound card and/or encoded at different bitrates, recorded
to harddisk and/or streamed to the net.
A great introduction to streaming and how to operate muse is available
online on
http://flossmanuals.org/muse, while even more documentation can
be found on its website.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 6. Graphical software
Image manipulation and 3d modeling
Image manipulation and 3d modeling
The dyne:bolic distribution includes some eccellent programs for image
composition and 3d modeling:
Gimp is a well mature application capable to create and edit bitmap
images, offers a perfect environment for web graphics as well a powerful
script engine to automatize its operations and even generate automatically
stylish logos.
Inkscape is a vectorial graphics editor suitable for free hand drawing,
cartoons and comics and more generally scalable graphics, realizing an
ideal tool for flyers, high resolution prints and quadri-chromic prints
Blender consists of a powerful environment for 3d modeling and game
development: it features a well designed interface, a ray tracing engine
and scriptability of object behaviours in python: it can produce rendered
scenes as well interactive applications and animations on timelines. There
is allready a great comunity of artists using it, tutorial and examples
are available on its website, as well a detailed manual that can be
ordered online. Blender is one of the best tools in the open source and
free software world for multimedia productions of many kinds, being
adopted in the production of several professional movies. Using the
clustering capability of dyne:bolic you can easily build render farms
distributing the load on several computers on the same network, see the
Spot's tutorial available online on http://.
GQview is an easy to use image browser which you can also use to build
slideshows to interactively show your image galleries.
ImageMagick is a set of commandline tools, starting from the convert
terminal command (see man convert) you can easily script batch operations
over multiple files, applying format conversion and filters on large
quantities of images.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 7. Text software
Text editing and publishing with dyne:bolic
Text editing and publishing with dyne:bolic
Dyne:bolic includes software to let you easily write and compose any kind
of text document: hyper-texts that can be published on the internet
(HTML), formatted texts that can be printed (RTF, PDF, Postscript and even
the deprecated DOC [1] format).
AbiWord is rapidly becoming a state of the art Word Processor, with lots
of features useful for your daily work, personal needs, or for just some
good old typing fun. It is able to read and write all industry standard
document types, such as OpenOffice.org documents, Microsoft Word
documents, WordPerfect documents, Rich Text Format documents, HTML web
pages and many more.
Scribus is a desktop publishing program to compose vectorial formats like
PDF and Postscript, it is useful to paginate text in a professional
printable form to produce magazines, flyers and most publications that
need to mix text and images in pages following customizable schemes.
Nedit is a plain text editor providing syntax highlight for a couple of
sourcecode languages, it is intuitive and easy to use for the newbies, but
at the same can offer a powerful environment for programmers.
At last, Antiword is a very handy commandline application to convert with
a simple command any .doc file into a plain text file, keeping the
alignement of the lines intact. For a quick start try it out:
[d:b] ~ #antiword evil.doc > good.txt [Enter]
as usual there are manual pages providing more informations on its usage,
just type man antiword into a terminal.
In case you need a full blown office suite to satisfy your needs here,
there is an Open Office 2.0 dyne module available online for download from
our website, you can place it into your Dock modules directory (
dyne/modules/ ) and at next reboot you'll find it in the application menu.
With Open Office you can read and write all .DOC files, .XLS spreadsheets,
.PPT presentations and more.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 8. Communication software
Communication software included in dyne:bolic
Communication software included in dyne:bolic
Since their birth, UNIX systems have been specially enhanced for network
tasks, to efficiently handle communication protocols connecting computers
across the net and of course the Internet. Being a GNU/Linux system,
dyne:bolic offers a vast range of possibilities and applications, from the
simpliest to the most advanced network software.
As a practical tool for media hacktivism, dyne:bolic emphasizes on
protecting the privacy of the users, providing an anonymizing proxy and
email encryption tools ready for use.
The Samba filesharing daemon runs by default on dyne:bolic, sharing in
read-only the currently running system on the local network to make it
available for network installing. If you want to share other directories
you'll need to tweak by hand the configuration file in /etc/samba
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Surf the web
software to access the world wide web
There are three different ways to access the WWW pages on the net using
dyne:bolic, thanks to the variety of web browsers developed for the
GNU/Linux platform.
The first and most familiar browser is Firefox which is developed by the
Mozilla team in order to have a fully capable tool to access the web.
Firefox offers an intuitive interface, bookmark handling and a couple of
plugins that can be used to extend its functionalities.
Then we have Links which is a lightweight alternative to the previous: it
runs much faster on old computers while still offering most of the crucial
functionalities. It is remarkable its quality and speed in rendering web
pages, making it a great tool for presentations.
In order to edit webpages, Nvu is provided for web designers, which
provides a powerful WYSIWYG environment that is fully integrated with the
Firefox/Mozilla standards of webpages. It is a user-friendly tool that
you'll find available also for many other platforms and operating systems,
so it's worth a little effort to learn how to use it, then you can have
your homepage ready in minutes.
A powerful "spider" is also included to crawl and download entire
websites: WGet, which is a commandline tool. As usual you can discover how
it works by consulting its manual from an XTerminal, typing man wget.
For better privacy and anomymity when browsing, but also to weed out often
annoying advertisements and popups, a proxy can be configured to run by
default: Tor can be configured for use in each browser to make all
internet connections completely anonymous and not traceable.
To enable this feature have a look at the dyne.cfg in your DOCK and add
"tor" in the list of daemons to be started at boot.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Email and encryption
Send your letters in a safe way
Email is nowadays the most widespread technology used for personal
communication on the net. Alltough it is often not secured for privacy and
it is being easily intercepted by all kind of third parties: to enforce
governmental control, market surveys and spionage. If you are concerned
about privacy then you probably allready heard about the solution to
secure email communication: encryption.
Encryption is a technique based on mathematical formulas, it can ensure
security in your communication by using two keys: a private and a public
one, you will give the public to your friends while keep the private one
to decypher the messages you receive - everyone wanting to send you a
secure message will need to use your public key to encrypt it and only
your private key will be able to decrypt it. For more information on its
usage and implementation refer to the web pages on
http://www.gnupg.org
Dyne:bolic comes equipped with a popular email program: Thunderbird which
can handle local downloading of mailbox, filters, folders and multiple
accounts. It can be integrated with the GnuPG encryption system installing
a plugin extension called Enigmail.
Also included is GPA the GNU Privacy Assistant which will help you in the
task of generating your encryption keys and handling the collection of
your friends keys into a local keyring.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 9. Development tools
Extend and customize the dyne liveCD
Extend and customize the dyne liveCD
Dyne:II comes with an SDK to re-master a dyne liveCD including all your
modifications and to package additional software collections. In fact,
Dyne:II is a Dyne to produce Dyne. See it like a Nomad Distribution
attached to no hardware. You carry your live cd/dvd/usb key loaded. you
boot on it on any machine, you do your stuff (from a user AND/OR developer
point of view), you create a new live cd, you remove all your traces and
you leave the camp. Just walk around the world with your rewritable CD or
usb-stick and that's it.
Dyne:bolic is a quite simple and minimalistic operating system (the
underlying distribution philosophy can be referred to the Slackware one
and more in general to the KISS principle), all scripted in shell, awk and
sed from scratch. Function libraries along with auxiliary programs are all
included in the /lib/dyne directory, where the code is fairly documented.
In this chapter you'll find documentation on how to create and publish new
modules, repack a new CD. For more informations and as a reference to the
inner structure of dyne:bolic keep in mind this distribution is written
from scratch following the book Linux From Scratch which provides an
extensive explanation on how everything was put together
The GNU C and C++ Compiler is included along with several scripting
language and relative toolkit externals as Python, Perl, Tcl/Tk and Ruby.
Also 3 different integrated development environments are included for
visual programming: Glade working with GTK and C, Fluid working with Fltk
and C++, Gambas (provided by the external devel module) for basic visual
programming. Also gtkdialog is used so you can quickly realize graphical
dialogs and user interaction combining various components.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Customize your dyne liveCD
It is possible to customize and expand dyne:bolic in various ways:
creating software modules to add applications and distribute them to
friends, as well change the behaviour of the system when booting. To
facilitate customization and development a dynesdk tool is provided,
automatizing the process of packing changes into a new live CD.
For a good introduction on the potential of this tool you can read online
Stomfi's article on customizing dyne:bolic on
http://www.linux.com/articles/54607
To get started with your development first create the SDK in the DOCK on
your harddisk:
[d:b] ~ # dynesdk mksdk [Enter]
you'll be prompted with two questions: it is safe to answer no in both
cases, unless you want to change things in the dyne:II core:
* [?] do you want to uncompress the dyne.sys (y/N) ?
* [?] do you want to download the kernel sources (y/N) ?
in case you don't give an answer, it will default to NO after 10 seconds
and go on.
This procedure will create an SDK directory inside $DYNE_SYS_MNT/dyne,
then populate it with development files that are downloaded from the
online subversion repository if you have network connectivity.
With the SDK you can pack modifications to your system inside a new CD
ISO: that is created out of the contents of SDK/cdrom, you can add and
remove modules from SDK/cdrom/dyne/modules as well add things inside the
CD filesystem.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Create new software modules
Once you have an SDK and some space available on your harddisk you can
start creating your own software modules to add applications to
dyne:bolic, see the "Extra software modules" section of this manual for
more information about features and usage of .dyne modules, now we'll go
on with some instructions on how to create them.
First of all make sure you dock your system on a harddisk, then create an
SDK (see previous chapter). When you have an SDK directory in your
harddisk you can see it's location just typing:
[d:b] ~ # echo $DYNE_SYS_MNT/SDK [Enter]
Next step is to create the module directory in the SDK, so let's choose
our module name first: we are going to create the spaghetti module, with
the commands
[d:b] ~ # mkdir -p $DYNE_SYS_MNT/SDK/modules/spaghetti [Enter]
[d:b] ~ # mkdir $DYNE_SYS_MNT/SDK/modules/spaghetti/bin [Enter]
[d:b] ~ # mkdir $DYNE_SYS_MNT/SDK/modules/spaghetti/lib [Enter]
[d:b] ~ # touch $DYNE_SYS_MNT/SDK/modules/spaghetti/VERSION [Enter]
basically we are just creating the bin and lib directories and a VERSION
file inside the module, you can do that with any filebrowser or midnight
commander if you like: c'mon, make yourself comfortable ;)
The last thing to do is to activate our spaghetti module, mounting it on
/opt/spaghetti since all modules are activated in the /opt prefix. To do
that we use again a DyneSdk command
[d:b] ~ # dynesdk mount [Enter]
[d:b] ~ # source /boot/dynenv.modules [Enter]
That's it! our new module is mounted in /opt and we have our PATHs
configured accordingly.
Keep in mind that you need to use dynesdk mount once after every boot,
before starting development on your module. You can as well open up for
development an already existing module (your good old gnocchi module for
instance) with the command:
[d:b] ~ # dynesdk devel gnocchi [Enter]
You'll be then prompted with a question, if you want to decompress the
content of the module for development, with an indication about the space
that will be occupied by it on your harddisk.
Now you can compile the spaghetti software you like with
[d:b] ~ # ./configure --prefix=/opt/spaghetti [Enter]
or editing the PREFIX in the Makefile in some cases - and don't forget the
sauce! :)
To make it easier, when software is built with the usual "./configure &&
make && make install", you can use the dynemodconf command (followed by
the module name) instead of calling ./configure directly: that will set
the prefix and more environment correctly, for example to compile
"aglio-0.5" with flag "--with-basilico" inside our spaghetti module:
[d:b] ~/aglio-0.5 # dynemodconf spaghetti --with-basilico [Enter]
Once you are done with cook... ahem, compiling, then you can squash
everything into a compressed .dyne module with
[d:b] ~/aglio-0.5 # dynesdk squash spaghetti [Enter]
and that's it! your new module will be found in
$DYNE_SYS_MNT/dyne/SDK/cdrom/dyne/modules/spaghetti.dyne and ready to be
included in the next CD ISO that you can pack with dynesdk mkiso.
Before releasing your module into the public, is a good idea to fill up
some information about your creation so that people can contact you and
visit software homepages. That's what the VERSION file is for, and it's
format is very simple:
name Spaghetti
desc spaghetti pizza mandolino e presidente scemo
version 1.0
url
http://tuttifrutti.org/spaghetti
packager The Crazy Cook
http://tuttifrutti.org/~crazycook
Just use your favorite text editor to fill in these fields, leave a space
or a tab between the field name and value and that's it.
You can add entries and submenus for the user to start up your software.
To do so create an applist file inside your module's etc directory, like
for example /opt/spaghetti/etc/applist. The applist file will list
application binaries, descriptions and ways to start them up thru flags.
Here it follows a description of the format, basically a | separated list:
# format:
# name | description | command | flags | web url | author
# flags:
# runonce | multi = if there should be only one instance running, or not
# terminal = if it should run in a terminal
# manual = if it's a manual entry
# root | user = if it must be run as root or as user
# submenus can start and end with
# Begin | MySubmenu
# End | MySubmenu
for example:
Begin | SPAGHETTI
AglioeOlio | aglio olio e peperoncino | pasta --agliolio | |
http://tuttifrutti.org | The Crazy Cook
Puttanesca | olive capperi e alici | pasta --puttan | |
http://tuttifrutti.org | The Crazy Cook
Pesto | pesto alla genovese | pasta --pesto | |
http://tuttifrutti.org | The Crazy Cook
End | SPAGHETTI
You can also have submenus, just use Begin and End once again inside. For
a complete example see the system application list in
$DYNE_SYS_MNT/applist.
In case your module needs to set environment variables (like custom paths
and general settings for applications) you can simply declare them in a
env file inside the etc directory. That file can contain declarations of
environment variables, one per line, which will be exported in the running
system, for example in our spaghetti module /opt/spaghetti/etc/env will
look like:
KITCHEN_PATH=/opt/spaghetti/lib/kitchen
GLOBAL_TASTE=spicy
COOK_PROFILE=big_nose
You can include your own home settings inside a module, so that they will
override the default dyne:II user settings. This is useful when you want
to change the window manager default configuration (with a new desktop
image for example) or deliver pre-configured applications (with a .config
file in home). To do this you simply have to create a skel directory
inside your module: all files that are included in it will be
automatically copied into all users home directories and setted up to be
adopted for users that are created in future. <
In your modules you can include any kernel module correctly compiled for
the dyne:II kernel. To do this you have to create a kernel directory
inside your module: all kernel modules contained will be searched and
loaded if found by the loadmod command, to be used instead of the standard
modprobe. In case the module is not naturally requested by your hardware
configuration (not listed by the pcimodules command), you build your own
detection or force loading of your module inside a module startup script.
You can prepare a script inside your module to be executed every time your
module is activated. To do this you have to create an etc directory inside
your module: all executable files included in the rc.* wildcard will be
launched at startup, with the first $1 argument being the name of the
module itself.
So here is resumed the file structure contained in modules:
VERSION required file contains information about the module and its sources
bin optional directory contains all binaries, automatically included in $PATH
lib optional directory contains all libraries, automatically included in $LD_LIBRARY_PATH
etc optional directory, contains rc.* startup scripts executed at activation
skel optional directory, contains all settings to be added to /home/user and /etc/skel
kernel optional directory, contains kernel modules that can be loaded by loadmod
You have the power to create, now go make something wonderful! :)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Index
Audio , Audio production
Amarok , Play
Ardour , Record and edit
Audacity , Record and edit
Formats , Play
Free Wheeling , Perform
Hydrogen , Perform
Jack Rack , Perform
Jamin , Perform
MikMod , Play
MuSE , Stream
Rezound , Record and edit
Streaming manual , Stream
Time Machine , Record and edit
Timidity , Play
Xmms , Play
Image
Blender , Graphical software
Gimp , Graphical software
GQview , Graphical software
ImageMagick , Graphical software
InkScape , Graphical software
Network , Communication software
Email , Email and encryption
Links , Surf the web
Mozilla , Surf the web
NVU Web page editor , Surf the web
Samba , Communication software
Thunderbird , Email and encryption
Tor , Surf the web
Wget Web spider , Surf the web
Privacy
Email , Email and encryption
Enigmail , Email and encryption
Gpa , Email and encryption
Tor anonymity proxy , Surf the web
Text , Text software
AbiWord , Text software
AntiWord , Text software
Nedit , Text software
Open Office , Text software
Scribus , Text software
Video , Video production
AviDeMux , Edit
Cinelerra , Edit
Device setup, Configure your video devices
EffecTV , VeeJay
FFMpeg , Play
FreeJ , VeeJay, Stream
HasciiCam , Stream
Kino , Record
Mencoder , Record
Mpeg4IP , Stream
Mplayer , Play
Pure Data , VeeJay
Streaming , Stream
Transcode , Edit
Xaos , VeeJay
XawTV , Record
Xine , Play
afrolinux, This is Rasta software
Architecture, Development tools
boot from harddisk, Boot from harddisk, Boot from harddisk
boot from network, Boot from network, Boot from network
cfdisk, Boot from harddisk, Boot from harddisk
Customize, Development tools
docking, Install on harddisk? Dock!
filesystem organization, Access your data volumes
grub, Boot from harddisk, Boot from harddisk
license
copyright, License and disclaimer
lilo, Boot from harddisk, Boot from harddisk
manuals, How to use this manual
mke3fs, Boot from harddisk, Boot from harddisk
modules, Extra software modules
nesting, Nest your home and settings
NTFS, Discover the system
partitioning, Boot from harddisk, Boot from harddisk
Programming, Development tools
pure:dyne, Extra software modules
rastasoft, This is Rasta software
streamtime, Streamtime
usb pendrive, Access your data volumes
Volumes, Discover the system
Xfce, Your desktop environment
Notes
[1] You shouldn't use the .DOC format for many reasons: it exposes all
your previous changes in your documents which can often lead to a
privacy problem, it can vehicle dangerous viruses that affect other
proprietary systems and it stores your text in a non-readable way
which ties you up to the availability of proprietary software. See the
extensive document
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html on the topic.
However, dyne:bolic is able to read and write all .DOC files.
