Last week, me and 2 Indonesian openSUSE members : Bonnie Kurniawan & M Herry Nurdin holds a training session at Grha Pemuda & Olah Raga (Youth Fellow & Sports Building), State Ministry for Youth Affairs and Sports of the Republic of Indonesia, Senayan, Jakarta.

Training focused on openSUSE server function and administration, with an overview about openSUSE 11.0 features and capability. There are totals 20 audiences on first and second day, and 40 audiences on third day, came from sub dept of State Ministry for Youth Affairs and Sports and they will administer openSUSE server on their office. Most of the audiences are newbie for Linux but they have no problem with openSUSE administration. They looks a quite bit worried when we got an introduction about Command Line Interface, but after a few minutes, they’re enjoy the training.

Training taking full 3 days to complete, started on June 07 2008 until June 09, 2008. I gave a presentation and practical guide for openSUSE installation (hey, it’s pretty nice to show off openSUSE installation process. It needs a few step only, with yes, no and next ), domain controller and active directory with samba, Apache Web Server and Virtual Host and an introduction about YAST usability.

I have a small discussion about Indonesian openSUSE community with Edy Purwanto, IT administrator for State Ministry for Youth Affairs and Sports office, and he promised to helped us setting up and provide openSUSE mirror by using dedicated server and dedicated internet access in his office. Well, it’s a good news for upcoming openSUSE 11.0 release on June 19, 2008. We will set up this server for ISO image and repository download services.

We also distributed openSUSE 11.0 RC1 free CD and DVD plus a set of tutorial for the audiences and told them to contact us if they have any problem with openSUSE implementation at their office units.

In earlier post, I’m writing “How to build openSUSE LiveUSB with Kiwi” tutorial guide and thinking how to get same results with more easier tips. Another distro came with easy trick to make a bootable LiveUSB and I think openSUSE should be . Kiwi is a great tools for making openSUSE liveUSB, QEMU Image, VMWare Image, XEN Image and LiveCD Image but it would not fit with any situation.

I’ve search various topics and found some of them looks pretty interesting to try. After reviewing some tips, here is a tutorial guide to make openSUSE 11.0 LiveUSB with the easiest way :

BENEFIT

1. Tutorial can be used on Linux or Windows
2. Do not need to install openSUSE onto hard disk for making LiveUSB as it was with KIWI. Just download the LiveCD ISO image and a tools for make an extract of ISO content (7-zip on Windows and mount -o loop tips on Linux)
3. Can used FAT 32 file system for interoperability (marketing hype ) and mobility of data. Flash disk could be accessing by various OS
4. Simple, only need a few step
5. Fast process, required a few minutes for copying ISO image and initrd process

PREPARATION

1. Preparing USB Flash Disk, 1 GB or more
2. If using Windows for making LiveCD, download latest version of syslinux
3. Download modified initrd – called initrdud – from this link. (it’s free ftp server which deleted any contents every 2 week. You could find another location from my personal blog uploads folder). The modified initrd contains modification from LiveCD boot into LiveUSB boot and addon for NLS modules (code page and character set) for FAT32 file system on USB. NOTED : for openSUSE 11.0 GM, please used this initrdud instead. Take a look on this post for the reason.

MAKE A BOOTABLE LIVEUSB

• ON WINDOWS

1. Run your Windows OS
2. Plug in USB Flash Disk
3. Extract syslinux on Windows folder
4. Open DOS Prompt (Command Prompt)
5. Navigate into win32 folder on syslinux folder
6. run syslinux -ma driver-letter-of-flash-disk, eg : syslinux -ma E: if E is your USB Flash Disk. Note : The process need a few second to make a bootable USB disk with syslinux, so don’t wait the process finished for 1 minutes or more

• ON LINUX
  1. Find your USB disk with df -h on konsole.
  2. Install syslinux and run syslinux /dev/sdx from konsole where /dev/sdx is your USB device
  3. If the above process failed for making bootable USB disk, try another tips

PROCESSING THE IMAGE

1. Plug in bootable USB disk
2. Create temporary folder for mounting LiveCD ISO Image mkdir liveiso
3. Mount ISO image into specified folder mount -o loop openSUSE-11.0-RC1-KDE4-LiveCD-i386.iso liveiso/ (I’m currently using openSUSE 11.0 RC1 KDE. Make a proper changes to your ISO image)
4. Copying all of liveiso content (mounted ISO content) into USB disk
5. Copying all of content on boot/i386/loader folder into root folder of USB disk
6. Rename isolinux.cfg on root folder of USB disk into syslinux.cfg
7. copying initrdud into root folder of usb disk
8. Make a few modification into syslinux.cfg, so, USB live will boot with initrdud. Make a change to this line : append initrd=initrd ramdisk_size=512000 ramdisk_blocksize=4096 splash=silent showopts into append initrd=initrdud kiwidebug=1 ramdisk_size=512000 ramdisk_blocksize=4096 splash=silent showopts kiwidebug=1 option will log any error while booting LiveUSB

TESTING

1. Boot your computer with USB HDD as top of boot device priority or make a hot boot change by pressing F12, F8, F9 or any key according to your computer
2. While booting, just press ENTER on boot option. Typing Live-System as mentioned on boot message will failed regarding kernel image

LIVEUSB INSTALLATION SCREENSHOT

Below are some LiveUSB installation screenshot.

CREDIT

Thanks to Manivas for great idea & tutorial.

FUTURE IDEA

Coolo was discarded his experimental test for making openSUSE liveUSB. The above process should be fine and *I think* quite enough to provide openSUSE LiveUSB for 11.0 released. By automating overall process and making a nice GUI, it should be increasing openSUSE 11.0 features. (if you asked me, “Why don’t you create automated process tools by yourself”, my answer is : “Yes, I will. I just thinking that it may need a less than a day for experience openSUSE developers for making the tools rather than waiting my C++ & QT course finished )

In 10.3, it was need a month after official release of 10.3 on October 04, 2008 for releasing LiveCD version of openSUSE. With this experience, is this possible to make this features included on openSUSE 11.0 ?

This is our first event for openSUSE promo on shopping mall . We invited by Ministry of Information & Technology of the Republic of Indonesia and we had a booth for free of charge .

I have a big problem for this event. It’s my personal problem, not with the community et all. The event hold on working day (Tuesday to Wednesday, May 27-28, 2008) and I cannot take any guarantee for attending the event due to my jobs and responsibility at work. I will take a moment for attending the event but it would be for a few hour only

Unfortunately, I got various support from community member. Some of them told me that they could help for booth set up and act as promotional guys. A friend of mine, Imron from Yayasan Air Putih lend us a set of PC server, Acces point and LCD monitor. Another member supported us by donating some cash for enclosed daily activity cost.

Thank you for helping us to make a successful booth on IGOS Summit 2. See you there…

Last week, Indonesian openSUSE community (openSUSE-ID) had a regular monthly meeting on Saturday, May 24, 2008. for promotional and marketing benefit, we choose Detik.com-currently biggest online newspaper in Indonesia) office at Aldevco Octagon Building Jakarta as our location for meeting. This is our sixth regular meeting since November 2007.

As scheduled on my previous post, this meeting covering up some agenda, ie : openSUSE 11.0 features preview, knowledge share about zypper package manager, our preparation for booth on IGOS Summit 2 event, openSUSE 11.0 release party and openSUSE on Live USB demo.

Meeting started on 09.30 am (GMT+7), opening by Vavai from openSUSE-ID and Andry S Huzain from Detik.com. Vavai describing about community in general, overview and next plan in 2008. Andry told us about the implementation of Linux project on Detik.com, beside his activity with Mac OS.

Next session fill in by Donnie S Bhayangkara (Poepil). He gave a presentation about zypper usage, from adding, modifying and removing repos to package modification with zypper. He show the different style between yast, smart and zypper and told us about zypper improvement on openSUSE 11.0.

Vavai enclosed the meeting with preview of OpenSUSE 11.0 features and OpenSUSE LiveUSB creator with KIWI.

Session of meeting activity could be found here and here

We got about 30-40 registered members will be attending the meeting. It would reach more than 30 members because some of our regular meeting members didn’t submit their registration. The registration process itself only counted how much the attendees for better meeting room preparation.

This month, the agenda of meeting will cover up some discussion topics : openSUSE 11.0 features and highlight preview, presentation about zypper package manager, openSUSE on USB Live Stick demo, preparation for IGOS Summit 2 event (The event looks similar with FOSDEM in Europe. We have openSUSE booth at the event) and openSUSE 11.0 release party.

I’ll be update with some picts of our monthly meeting.

Indonesian openSUSE Community (openSUSE-ID) monthly meeting will be held on Saturday, May 24, 2008, 09.00-13.00 am (GMT+7) at Detik.com head office Jakarta. Detik.com currently is the biggest online newspaper in Indonesia.

The monthly meeting called “Kopdar”, means “Kopi Darat” or offline/physical/face to face meeting.

This monthly meeting will be discuss some issue regarding openSUSE 11.0 release party on June 2008, preview about openSUSE 11.0 features, openSUSE remastering and share knowledge about zypper package manager.

Another topic is about our agenda on IGOS Summit 2 event. IGOS stand for Indonesia goes Open Source and IGOS Summit 2 is an event prepared by Ministry of Communication and Information Technology of Indonesia to encourage open source application usability in Indonesia. OpenSUSE-ID have a booth at the event. Well, it’s a small booth (2.75 m x 2.5 m with 1300 watt of electricity) but this booth is free of charge and we have a nice opportunity to promoting openSUSE.

We choose Detik.com as our place for monthly meeting to reached more user and (maybe) to get a nice publication about our activity. a friend of mine worked for Detik.com and he helped me to arrange this event. Thanks Andry.

So, if you are an Indonesian openSUSE lover, why don’t you join with us on Detik.com. Let share together !