Designing Sealed SystemsTM

Back

This course teaches you how to design, build, and deploy sealed systems.

Materials

You'll receive a course workbook at the class. You'll also receive a CD-ROM that is an example of a sealed system.

Who should attend?

This course is for those who need to design sealed systems. It is geared to technical people who are well-grounded in computer system concepts and practices. You should already be proficient with operating system and file system concepts and have practical experience with the details of installing, upgrading, and administering computer systems. You should also have attended ALC's Sealed Systems course.

If your only experience with computer systems is Microsoft Windows, you should attend training courses on Unix or Linux first. While some sealed system techniques will work with Windows, most will either not work or not be as effective.

Course Outline

This outline does not necessarily represent the order in which the topics will be covered during the course.

  • System design philosophy
    • Roles - division of labor, responsibility, and concerns
      • System Architect
      • Tailor
      • System Administrator
      • Software Vendor
    • System components
      • Boot system - System Architect
      • System proper - System Architect
      • Opts - Software vendor
      • Configfs - Tailor
      • Data extent - System Administrator
  • System Startup Issues
    • Boot Loaders - syslinux, isolinux, Grub
    • Boot media - CD/DVD, USB memory, etc.
    • Ramdisk mode
    • Installing on NTFS
    • Initial RAM disks
    • How to create splash screens for branding
    • Authenticating the system image
  • Advanced File System Concepts
    • Mutable/immutable storage
    • Persistent/non-persistant files
    • Loopback file systems
    • Compressed, encrypted, and temporary file systems
    • Nesting file systems
    • Impact on the FHS standard
    • A new way to think about backing up systems
    • Making ISO images
    • A map of a sealed system's file system
  • Creating the System Proper
    • System proper philosophy - a support platform that exists to make OPT deployment possible
    • No duplication of functionality
    • The seed filesystem
    • Space constraints
    • Scripts to handle integration of components and default configuration
    • Keeping upstream provider configs pristine
    • Overrides in initfs/etc
    • Expiring systems
    • Using Debian packages, Gentoo packages, or source
    • chroot issues
    • Maintaing multiple work areas for different versions
    • Using exclude files to prune the system proper
    • Maintaining multiple kernel capability
  • Boot Time Operations
    • Tailored boot options
    • Incremental booting
    • Initial file system
    • Hotplug
    • Finding the singularities/data extents
    • Weaving the root file system
    • The startup scripts
      • linuxrc/scandev
      • tce-setup
      • tce-init
      • tce-opts
  • Configfs
    • The configuration file system
    • The systems personality
    • Boot splash
    • runlevel.conf
    • network configuration
    • Hostname, phonehome.conf...
    • Startup scripts for opts
    • Configure gdm
    • Adding Gnome vfolders
    • Adding Gnome gconf hierachies
  • OPTs
    • The build command
    • /etc/init.d startup scripts
    • runlevel.conf
    • The /TCE/TCE directory
    • The tce-opts script
    • Java jars and jnlp files

Back Copyright © 2003-2005 by the Accelerated Learning Center. All rights reserved.
Sealed Systems is a Trademark of Tailored Computers