Meikian Live Release 1.0 April 22, 2015 Contents 1 Meikian Live 3 1.1 What is a “Live” distribution?......................................3 1.2 Technological base............................................3 1.3 Resources.................................................3 1.4 Hardware requirements.........................................4 1.5 Hardware tested with the distribution..................................4 2 Using Meikian Live 7 2.1 Recording to DVD............................................7 2.2 Copy to an USB storage device.....................................7 2.3 Using persistence for user data...................................... 10 2.4 Users................................................... 10 3 Specific software included in the distro 11 3.1 2D design................................................. 11 3.2 Circuit design............................................... 11 3.3 CNC................................................... 11 3.4 3D printer control............................................ 11 3.5 Tools for working with 3D objects.................................... 11 3.6 Slicer for 3D objects........................................... 12 3.7 3D modeling............................................... 12 3.8 Programming............................................... 12 3.9 Arduino programming.......................................... 12 4 Building a Meikian Live image 13 4.1 Root access................................................ 13 4.2 Needed tools............................................... 13 4.3 Meikian Live repository on GitHub................................... 13 4.4 Modifying Meikian Live building script................................. 14 4.5 Applying patch to Live-Build 3.x.................................... 14 4.6 Creating Meikian Live iso........................................ 14 5 Contributing 17 5.1 Types of contributions.......................................... 17 5.2 Starting!................................................. 18 5.3 Instructions to make a “pull request”.................................. 18 6 History 21 6.1 2015.04.25................................................ 21 i 6.2 2014.11.07................................................ 21 6.3 2014.09.28................................................ 22 6.4 2014.07.12................................................ 22 6.5 2014.03.23................................................ 23 6.6 2014.02.19................................................ 23 6.7 2014.02.13................................................ 23 6.8 2014.02.01................................................ 24 6.9 2014.01.14................................................ 24 6.10 2014.01.09................................................ 24 7 Licenses 25 7.1 Distribution building system....................................... 25 7.2 Meikian Live Distribution........................................ 26 8 Credits 29 8.1 Main developer.............................................. 29 8.2 Contributors............................................... 29 8.3 Beta testers................................................ 29 8.4 Projects that have made possible Meikian Live............................. 29 ii Meikian Live, Release 1.0 Contents: Contents 1 Meikian Live, Release 1.0 2 Contents CHAPTER 1 Meikian Live Meikian Live originally born as CW-Live within the Clone Wars Project community. The idea behind Meikian Live origin is to provide a working environment with the most common tools to work with 3D printers (part design and printing), Arduino, electronic circuits, CNC, RC, robotics, etc., as well as resources and related documentation. The main points to be considered in their development are: • Make it a free system. It must allow free usage, modification and redistribution to anyone interested in using it. •A low resources consumption. It is important that the needed resources for operation are low, as this will allow to use it in a greater number of computers while allowing reuse of older machines. 1.1 What is a “Live” distribution? A Live distribution is a set consisting of an operating system, additional software and settings, that is ready to boot and run from a removable drive (CD/DVD-ROM, USB flash or hard drive, etc.), allowing you to work with it without affecting the operating system, software or settings of the computer on which it runs. 1.2 Technological base Debian GNU/Linux was used for the development of the distribution as base operating system. It is one of the oldest GNU/Linux that exist today and enjoying excellent health, as evidenced by the fact that it is still used as a base for many other distributions, some of them really popular, as Ubuntu or LinuxMint. The software used for its development is DebianLive, a Debian own system to create custom Live systems. 1.3 Resources • The Meikian web page. • The code and files needed to generate an image of the distribution from scratch are available in meikian-dev GitHub repository. • The complete project documentation is included in the distribution itself and also available online at docs.meikian.eu. • A mailing list / user’s group at Google Groups. 3 Meikian Live, Release 1.0 1.4 Hardware requirements The requirements to run Meikian Live are relatively modest compared with the hardware resources at the disposal of any existing equipment. In turn, the total resources consumption is also determined by the tasks that will be performed, so it is not recommended to use the distribution with lower resources than the specified ones to be able to work with minimal fluency in most included programs: • Memory: Minimum amount of RAM memory recommended is 512MB Note: If unpartitioned free space is available on the hard drive of the computer or the device from which you are booting, overall performance may be improved by creating partitions for swap or for data persistence. In this way part of the used RAM is released and is then available to be used by the operating system and the programs. • Processor: Intel Pentium4 or equivalent minimum processor. 1.5 Hardware tested with the distribution 1.5.1 Computers • Acer Aspire 7220: OK • Acer Aspire 5610Z: OK • Acer Aspire 7750G: OK • Apple MacBook 2007 A1181: Boot from USB devices is not working, booting from DVD unit OK • Apple MacBook Air 11” 2011: OK • Apple MacBook Pro 5.1 15” late 2008: Not detected booting. KO • Apple MacBook Pro Retina 11.2 15” late 2013: Boot with some problems and does not detect the WiFi card • Apple MacMini 2012: Boot with some problems and does not detect the WiFi card • Asus A55VD: OK • Asus EeePC T101MT: OK • Asus X54H: — • Clevo D400E: OK • Dell Inspiron 1564-4730: The WiFi card is a Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY using the b43 module (firmware needed). OK • Dell Inspiron n5050: OK • Dell Latitude D610: WiFi interface is “eth*” not “wlan*”. OK • Dell Latitude E6400: OK • Dell XPS L521X: OK • HP 500B MT: OK • HP Compaq NX9030: WiFi interface is “eth*” not “wlan*”. OK • Lenovo Ideapad u430 Touch: Without WiFi support. OK • Lenovo n500: OK 4 Chapter 1. Meikian Live Meikian Live, Release 1.0 • Lenovo t430s: OK • Lenovo x200s: OK • PackardBell EasyNote A7738: WiFi interface is “eth*” not “wlan*”. OK • PackardBell S1300: Tested booting from DVD unit. OK • Toshiba PORTEGE Z930-145: OK • Toshiba Satellite A300: OK 1.5.2 Controller boards • Arduino Mega 2560+ RAMPS 1.4 • Gen7 1.4.1 • Gen7 1.5 • Megatronics v2.0 • Megatronics v3.0 • Sanguinololu 1.3a • SAV MKI+ SAV 3D LCD 1.5. Hardware tested with the distribution 5 Meikian Live, Release 1.0 6 Chapter 1. Meikian Live CHAPTER 2 Using Meikian Live Meikian Live distribution download can be made through the links on www.meikian.eu download page. Once you download the iso file containing the distribution, the content need to be transfered to a physical device. Procedures for performing the operation depend on both the physical device and the operating system used. 2.1 Recording to DVD No problem about the platform or operating system used, since any CD/DVD recording program that allows iso images recording will be able to perform this operation. 2.2 Copy to an USB storage device 2.2.1 Using GNU/Linux • Using dd command: The first step will be to connect the storage unit you want used for the copy of the distribution, it must have capacity enough to accommodate the downloaded iso. If you want to create one or more additional partitions to use data persistence, the size needed space will increase depending on the size you want for those partitions. After connecting the storage unit from a command console dmesg command can be used to see last message lines from kernel and get the device ID that the system assigned to it. To copy the iso file, two differnt methods can be used: – The first, more correct, will be using the commands isoinfo and dd: For example, to obtain the information of meikian-live_beta1.iso file, the following command will be executed: user@meikian-dev:~$ isoinfo -d -i meikian-live_beta1.iso CD-ROM is in ISO 9660 format System id: Volume id: Meikian_20140915 Volume set id: Publisher id: MEIKIAN Data preparer id: LIVE-BUILD 3.0.5-1; HTTP://PACKAGES.QA.DEBIAN.ORG/LIVE-BUILD Application id: MEIKIAN LIVECD Copyright File id: 7 Meikian Live, Release 1.0 Abstract File id: Bibliographic File id: Volume set size is: 1 Volume set sequence number is: 1 Logical block size is: 2048 Volume size is: 749984 El Torito VD version 1 found, boot catalog is in sector 76 Joliet with UCS level 3 found Rock Ridge signatures version 1 found Eltorito validation header: Hid 1 Arch 0 (x86) ID