Once you've downloaded Tailwind-Live Maker ISO and burnt it to a CD-ROM or DVD, reboot your computer and select the CD-ROM/DVD drive as the boot source.

If you all ready have a grub-booted Linux operating system on your computer, you can skip burning the CD-ROM or DVD and download the Tailwind-Live Maker tar file instead and follow these instructions.

When Tailwind-Live Maker finishes booting, you will get a short list of partitions that have 7Gig of free space. If nothing comes up then you forgot to connect your hard drive?

After selecting a suitable partition, you will get the following menu:

You can build your twl image with the following commands:

prep          # prepare enviro, download some files, get serial_no
mksq          # to make the filesystem.squashfs image file in
              # '../twl-iso-dir/live'
mksq x3d      # to make x3d (whitedune, freewrl etc) flavour
mkiso         # to make '../twl.iso' file (to burn to DVD)
cd $TOP       # change dir to top entry point 
tumount       # change dir to top and un-mount partion and loop
tagain        # change dir to top and restart build 
init 0        # shut down computer
init 6        # re-boot computer

thelp         # print this short help screen

If you selected a Fat32 partition, Tailwind-Live Maker will have created a 4Gig image file and loop mounted it on the Fat32 partition. This is because the Tailwind-Live make process requires a Linux partition to assemble and install the Linux OS before compressing it into the 'filesystem.squashfs' file.

NOTES:

• using a Fat32 partition will be slower than using a linux partition.

• you can make an X3D Tailwind-Live DVD - includes tools such as Whitedune and FreeWRL

Here is a run-down on what some of the Tailwind-Live Maker commands do:

• prep : This command prepares the build environment by downloading files from www.tailwind-live.org and other sites. The command also visits the tailwind-live.org file and grabs a serial number.
  
  Where possible, files are downloaded from the originating site (such as www.realplay.com for RealplayerGOLD11.bin) but if for some reason the file can't be downloaded (no longer exists?) prep will switch to the Tailwind-Live download directory.
  
  This command also downloads some specific .deb files in the debfiles-local directory from the tailwind-live.org site that are difficult to locate on the web.
  
  In all cases, these large file downloads are checked against md5sums and re-tried if they do not pass the md5sum check.
  
  If you run the prep command multiple times, key files are downloaded again (such as the list of downloads and md5sum files) and then the remaining large files are checked and if they exist, no download is performed.
  
  You can also run prep 'n.n.n' where n.n.n is the Tailwind-Live version # you want to build. You can see the revision history here. Note that these version numbers can change frequently and do not require you to download a new Maker iso image. The default version (on Maker boot) will generally be the most recent and you can see your current version in the file misc-files/twl.version.number.

• mksq : This command builds the Tailwind-Live distro and squashes it into the filesystem.squashfs file in the ../twl-iso-dir directory.
  
  If the directory ../twl-archives exists, all the .deb files are moved over to the squashfs-root/var/cache/apt/archives directory. This speeds up the build process considerably since half the build time is normally apt-get downloading files.
  
  If you run mksq x3d it will build an X3D flavour of Tailwind-live with apps such as whitedune and FreeWRL.

  mksq is actually just a wrapper to two programs: mksqdir and mksqfile which are described next.

• mksqdir : This command makes the squashfs-root directory and essentially builds the DVD by installing all the packages from debian and running chroot-job to fine-tune the environment.
  
  If you want to go in and edit this squashfs-root when this script is finished, you can.
  
  One approach you might take is to chroot into this directory and install apps etc. then exit out and finish building the filesystem.squashfs file with mksqfile.
  
  Here is the detail:

  mount -t proc -o bind /proc squashfs-root/proc
  chroot squashfs-root
  umount squashfs-root/proc
  
  OR source script:
  
  source misc-files/chr
  

  Note that it is VERY IMPORTANT that you unmount squashfs-root/proc before you try to run mksqfile - otherwise the script will fail.

• mksqfile : This command makes the ../twl-iso-dir directory (the directory tree that you build your DVD from) and then stores a compressed squashfs-root in a single file called filesystem.squashfs.
  
  This command also adds the boot/grub directories and a few other files including the default grub startup (Tailwind-live).
  
  NOTE that the ../twl-iso-dir directory is not emptied but over-written to preserve any additional files you want to include in your DVD. The path to content on the DVD will be /live/image/*.

• mkiso : This command re-writes the grub boot file stage2_eltorito and then makes the ../twl.iso ISO file.

• twl-mnt/twl-build

  This is the directory you are in when you first boot up into Maker. You can execute all Maker commands from here.

• twl-mnt/twl-archives

  The directory contains your archive of *.deb files from previous runs of mksq. If you halt mksq in the middle of processing, this directory will be empty but the next execution of mksq will see the archive in squashfs-root and ask you if you want to recover it.

• twl-mnt/twl-iso-dir

  This directory is the staging area for making the Tailwind-live ISO. It contains atleast two subdirectories live and boot. The live directory contains the critical filesystem.squashfs amount other linux boot and kernel files.
  
  This directory is NOT deleted by any tools but is over-written with new files when running mksq. This is so you can add content to your DVD to be used by your applications. The content directory path is /live/image/* when booted into Tailwind-live DVD.

• twl-mnt/twl-build/squashfs-root

  This directory is created by mksq (in fact, the sub-program mksqdir) and is the Tailwind-live Linux operating system in all it's glory. Once this directory is created, you can chroot into it (see above notes on mounting/unmounting processes!) and modify it before running or re-running mksqfile

• twl-mnt/twl-iso-dir/live/filesystem.squashfs

  This is a very large file in the 900Meg range and is a compression of the squashfs-root directory discussed above. When Tailwind-live is booted up, this file is loop mounted in a special way to present the linux OS to the running kernel.

• twl-mnt/twl-build/binary-packages

  This directory is created and populated by running prep. The binary files in this directory are downloaded from the internet and used by mksq to install apps and special Tailwind-live directories and files that do not exist in .deb format.

• twl-mnt/twl-build/debfiles-local

  This directory is created and populated by prep. The .deb files in this directory are files that are not available through apt-get repositories and are simlier to add directly.

• twl-mnt/twl-build/debfiles-addons

  This directory and it's contents can be created by the user to add additional .deb files to the Tailwind-live build. The user will be prompted to include or not this content and warned about licensing issues that may exist in these apps.

• twl-mnt/twl-build/misc-files/pbl-packages

  This file is the list of packages that will be installed when running mksq. This list is the source of the larger list of archive files downloaded and saved in twl-mnt/twl-archives. NOTE that you can edit this list and add/remove packages as you see fit. The next time you run prep this file will be returned to it's default content.

• twl-mnt/twl-build/misc-files/x3d-packages

  This file is the package list that is used when you run mksq x3d.

You can use this 'short cut' if you have an existing Linux operating system booting with GRUB and you have a partition that has about 100meg of free space.

NOTE that this partition could actually be an NTFS partition since it will be mounted 'read-only' when it boots.

• Download the tar file and un-tar it.
• Decide which directory you are going to use as the boot directory.
• copy the directory twl-image-maker and the file twl-build-boot.sh to the top of this directory.
• look at the boot/grub/menu-maker.lst file and enter something similar to your current grub menu.lst file.
• reboot with this grub menu item.

GRUB Hints and Tips

• boot parameter : live-media=/dev/sda1 will force vmlinuz to look for filesystem.squashfs on partition /dev/sda1
• boot parameter : live-media-path=twl-image-maker will force vmlinuz to look for filesystem.squashfs in directory twl-image-maker
• boot parameter : QUICKREBOOT=yes will suppress the 'remove cd-rom' question when rebooting
• boot parameter : swapon will tell twl-image-maker to look for a swap partition and mount it if found.
• boot parameter : ASPIREONE=yes will blacklist some modules to get the Aspire One to boot without crashing (known bug). (NOT SURE IF THIS IS STILL AN ISSUE)