1. dfsbuild
  2. the kernel
  3. qemu
  4. alternative LiveCDs

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dfsbuild

The base system of the CryptoBox Live-CD is created by dfsbuild.

It is recommended to use some kind of caching tool for the retrieval of the debian packages (e.g.: apt-cacher or apt-proxy). This saves a lot of bandwidth and time.

The documentation for dfsbuild is sparse. But it is quite unlikely, that you will get in direct contact with it, as it is wrapped by cbox-build. However the following links may help you for specific problems:

the kernel

The linux kernel for the CryptoBox is compiled statically. If you want to change it, you could follow this steps:

  1. get the sources: apt-get install kernel-tree-2.6.11 (or the version of your choice)

  2. copy the exisiting config file kernel/config-2.6.11 as .config into your kernel source directory

  3. build the debian kernel package make-kpkg --revision=1.dfs --rootcmd=fakeroot kernel_image

  4. change the kernel in the unpackdebs setting in dfs-cbox.conf (see CryptoBoxDevCustomBuild for details)

qemu

Qemu is a portable system emulator. It is a convenient tool to ease the development workflow, as you do not need to burn LiveCDs for testing.

alternative LiveCDs

We tried some other LiveCDs before we decided to use dfsbuild. The following pages describe their advantages and disadvantages as the base system for the CryptoBox: