Final Report : Investigate alternative DICE desktop platform (474)

The aim of this project was to investigate the feasibility of porting the DICE desktop environment to an alternative (non-Redhat) platform. The project was broken down into a number of requirements which are discussed individually below. As this was an investigative project the plan was to rapidly develop prototype solutions for the various requirements so that we could explore the issues and discover problems quickly. The expectation was that even if we decided to go ahead with fully porting DICE to an alternative platform some of these prototypes would need to be completely replaced and that the others would require further enhancements to fulfil all requirements.

Requirements

Add support to LCFG build tools for building packages

Local package repository management

Upstream package repository mirroring

Create essential LCFG headers for target platform(s)

Port LCFG client

Port LCFG "core" components

Port necessary LCFG "standard" components

Identify all components required for desktop platform

Produce list of components - status and proposed plan

Investigate package management options (e.g. updaterpms)

Investigate installer technologies (in particular FAI)

Investigate new network component

Investigate automated package building

Investigate Possibility of Encryption of whole disk of DICE machines

-- StephenQuinney - 05 May 2020