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Learn how to create your own LiveCD with Slax in this tutorial.
Live CDs can be useful for testing an operating system or performing special operations -- assuming there's a live CD distro that does what you need. Unfortunately, if you are running a special application, especially one you wrote yourself, no live CD will be tailored exactly to your needs. But creating you own live CD is easier than you might think, with Slax and its easy customization utility MySlax Creator.
I work in an international company that produces more than 100 million small metal parts per day. We need to prove to our customers that we are keeping our tolerances tight and our processes under control. The typical way to ensure processes are under control is with statistical process control (SPC), which involves gathering data and analyzing it in order to understand trends, anomalous situations, and issues. We found we could measure a feature we identified as critical to quality for our production by using a comparator linked to a PC through a serial port for data recording purposes.
After evaluating several different software alternatives we decided to write the application using Gambas, a Basic language development environment. We installed it on a PC running Kanotix, a Debian-based distribution, and developed and tested a graphical interface capable of gathering the data we needed with just three clicks of the mouse and one button pressed on the comparator.
After having successfully implemented one SPC station with Kanotix installed we wanted to prepare a second workstation for another area of the plant. We knew we could go through the same installation process as before, but we couldn't see any advantage to that; the first time we needed to develop and test the application, but for the second station we needed just to run the application.
In addition, due to the fact that a PC in a factory may be subject to electrical and mechanical shocks, we feared extended down time in case of hardware failures (especially the hard disk's), and we wanted to avoid reinstalling everything.
We realized a live CD would be a good solution. Our SPC station could boot its operating system from a CD and run our application and store data on a diskette, with no need for a hard drive. Full tutorial
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