Hello Phil,

* On 16 June 2011 20:06, Phil Nelson <phil_at_pcnelson.net> wrote:
> [...] The Appliance can run Linux, the primary platform for Coda [...]
>
>    7) Anything that might make this more useful to you that is not mentioned
> here?

I would see this as a nice opportunity to give things like Dapty (a
Linux software
environment distributed via Coda; www.aetey.se) a (virtual) kick start
on non-Linux
operating systems.
Sorta like a modern QEMU-Puppy :-)

> that all it would be used for is just the coda utilities (clog, codacon,
> and so forth) or would a fully functional Linux VM be the better way
> would cause a much larger VM image similar to the test appliance listed
> above.)

Xorg should be included. Probably also a light window manager like IceWM
and a good terminal emulator in case the console is acting/looking too
weird in the VM.
Gnome seems to be overkill to me, but that might just be personal preference.

For the console, please do include 'screen'.


The user should save documents(?) to either their coda realm or the host system.

That leaves the question about the venus cache which I can only comment on,
that at the moment with Dapty I use around 500MB of 2GB assigned maximum.
The reasonable solution, as Paulo Casanova has already mentioned, seems to
be to assign a virtual drive and allow the user to tweak the size themselves for
the long run.

> appliance with limited user space (the goal is to have 500Megs or smaller
> total appliance) and a large, full gnome installation with 4G (or more)
> virtual disk available for user use? (e.g. virtual disk of 8G as compared
> to 4G in the current appliance.)

Definitely! I would, however, favor a medium size.
So the ideal constellations in my view would be:

Small: console-only; used as a coda-windows-bridge (for a single user
only?). 512 MB maximum (fits small thumb drive and CD)
Medium: + xorg + light wm/desktop; usable also as a "thick client"
with a reasonable venus cache. Maximum 1GB or
               2 GB (about half of a cheap thumb drive to allow for
document storage)?
(And maybe also:
 Large: + Gnome/other heavy DE. 6-8GB total size seems reasonable in a
"save it on the Desktop if you want to" scenario.)

Regards,
Georg