Boot Matrix

From NST Wiki
Revision as of 06:54, 30 September 2009 by Paul Blankenbaker (talk | contribs) (NST Boot Comparison Table)
Jump to navigationJump to search

NST Boot Comparison Table

The NST system is capable of being booted in many different ways. The following comparison table shows what features you can expect depending upon how you boot your NST system ("Yes" is used for positive attributes and "No" for negative attributes).


Feature Live Persistent Movable Fixed Virtual Live Virtual Fixed
Device DVD Media
USB Thumb Drive
USB Thumb Drive USB Thumb Drive
Hard disk drive
Hard disk drive NST Virtual Machine (Live Boot) NST Virtual Machine (Full Install)
Install Yes Yes No No Yes No
Updates No No Yes Yes No Yes
Password No Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Wireless Tools Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
Persistence No Yes Yes Yes No Yes
No Overlay Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Compressed FS Yes Yes No No Yes No
Quick udev No No No Yes No Yes

Header Definitions

Live
Booting from ISO image on DVD or USB drive without a persistent overlay.
Persistence
Booting from USB drive with a persistent overlay which periodically fills up and must be cleared.
Movable
Full NST hard disk installation to a external drive which can easily moved from system to system.
Fixed
Full NST hard disk installation to permanent internal disk drive.
Virtual Live
Booting the NST ISO image within a virtual environment (such as VMware).
Virtual Install
Full NST hard disk installation running within a virtual environment (such as VMware).

Feature Definitions

Device
The device used to boot the NST distribution from.
Install
Able to perform a full hard disk installation after boot.
Updates
Able to fully use the package manager to perform system updates and add additional software packages to the system (ie yum update and yum install). While all NST boot mechanisms support the use of yum, if you are booting a Live NST system (even if using the USB overlay feature), you have to be very careful when managing packages as you will consume resources quickly.
Password
Indicates if the password is remembered between boots (if "No", then you must run the nstpasswd command after each boot).
Wireless Tools
Able to access wireless cards and run wireless tools like Kismet.
Persistence
Able to persist (save information) directly to the NST file system between boots.
No Overlay
This will be "Yes" if you don't have to manage a overlay area. It will be "No" if the persistence mechanism fills and needs to be periodically cleared (reset to the initial system state) at the boot prompt.
Compressed FS
This indicates that the file system is compressed. While a compressed file system may add a bit of additional CPU load, it reduces the storage space requirements and increases the effective throughput on slower I/O devices (like DVD media and USB disks).
Quick udev
This indicates that the NST system is installed on permanent hardware and can cache udev information between boots (it doesn't need to try and auto-detect the underlying hardware each time the system is booted).