Zephix Module Magic

Customising Zephix is really simple and straightforward. You can download ready-made modules online and copy them to the /Zephix/modules directory. Then, once you boot Zephix, all the copied modules are preloaded and activated automatically. Please note that the version of the software included in each module is the latest working version at the time the module file was modified.

Having said that, the real power of Zephix lies in the ability to create your own modules. Eight (8) carefully coded scripts are packaged into the system to make module creation and manipulation a breeze.

createmodule <target_file.zx> <application_name>

Zephix will temporarily download the required application_name files, including any dependencies, and then create the module target_file.zx. Once the module creation process is finished, all the downloaded files and dependencies (if any) are removed from the system. In this way, users can create multiple modules without rebooting the system each and every time. It is suggested to build modules in VirtualBox by creating and attaching a hard disk to the virtual machine if you would like to extend the available memory when building large module files. Zephix will take care of everything automatically then. Once the module file is successfully created, Zephix will try to move the file to the modules directory if it has write access.

changestomod <target_file.zx>

Boot the system and make the required changes. When you are ready, open a terminal, become root and use the changestomod command to package all the changes into a module saved as target_file.zx. It is very important to note that deleted files and directories are not saved in the module file and therefore they will still be available even after the module file is loaded on boot. Should you require to delete any files, directories or even uninstall software, you can then use the remastercore script to build a new 01-core.zx module. Once the module file is successfully created, Zephix will try to move the file to the modules directory if it has write access.

extractzxdir <source_file.zx>

This command converts the module source_file.zx into a directory and lets you make any required modifications.

packagedirzx <source_directory>

Once you are satisfied with your modifications to a decompressed module, you can then use the packagedirzx command to convert the directory back into a .zx module. Kindly note that module is created in the current directory and therefore, if a module file already exists with the same module name, it is overwritten without prompt.

extendmemory <size_in_MB>

The aim of this command is to extend the available swap space using virtual memory. It searches for any available partitions that contain enough free space to extend the memory to the specified size. The user can then choose from a list of available partitions. This is extremely useful when building large modules (ex: desktop environments).

mergemodules <source_file.zx> <destination_file.zx>

Updates files in the destination_file.zx with newer files from the source_file.zx and adds any new files and directories.

remastercore

Creates a new module file 01-core.zx which will serve as the base module for a custom remastered Zephix operating system. The default core module file will have to be manually replaced with the newly generated module file and any future module files will have to be built on the remastered system.

It is very important to use the correct module naming convension. A module should start with the next module number (padding with a leading zero or more where necessary) followed by a hypen, then the name of the module and finally the .zx extension (ex: 07-customisations.zx ). The first module included in Zephix is named 01-core.zx and modules are loaded in numerical order. For this reason, if a module depends on another module to work properly, it should start with a larger number that the one it depends on.

Once your changes are stored in a module, all you have to do is to copy the .zx module to the /Zephix/modules directory and reboot. If you are running Zephix from a read-only media such as a DVD, you may need to either re-generate the ISO image using any freely available application package or else create a directory named zx in the root of any other available media and copy the module files inside that directory. Zephix will then automatically scan all successfully detected media for any zx directory on boot.