Newsgroups: linux.debian.maint.boot Date: Thu, 20 May 2004
http://groups.google.com/group/linux.debian.maint.boot/browse_thread/thread/62a8fe4762336c65
Newsgroups: linux.debian.maint.boot Date: Thu, 20 May 2004
> I've seen that the ISO image contains an ordinary pool/dists debian > APT repository to hold packages, so I guess that simply replacing it > with a custom archive would make the trick.. isn't it?
Yes, I think that would work.
> Furthermore it would be nice to have a way to tell to the > installation system to automatically install a certain set of > packages after it finishes to install the base system.
There are two options. You can create an udeb with standard or higher priority, and call 'apt-install <package>' in its postinst script, or add a file base_include to the CD listing the extra packages to install. The second option is the BASE_INCLUDE variable in debian-cd CONF.sh
> AFAIK Skolelinux folks already went through this way, and my task > would be very similar.
Yes, we use both these methods. The first method is more flexible, because one can decide in the postinst script if a given package should be installed or not.
Petter Reinholdtsen
I'm almost done in preparing a customised d-i for the aGNUla/DeMuDi CDD, and I have to say that this new d-i is sooo beautiful and easy to tweak.
I'm basing on the beta4 release, and I decided not to use debian-cd for the moment.
I simply replaced the pool/ and dist/ trees, which include:
all the packages needed by debootstrap
all the main/debian-installer section
an home made udeb which installs a package which customise the base-config menu
the optional packages used by DeMuDi
Everything is running fine..
I still do not understand which is the proper way to autoconfigure XFree86, by now I'm using xdebconfigurator and dexconf.
Moreover it would be nice to have a tool which builds a minimum Debian mirror with just the packages needed by debootstrap and the most important udebs. I think that this way we could use debian-cd with a bottom-up approach, without downloading a whole debian mirror.
Free Ekanayaka
> Moreover it would be nice to have a tool which builds a minimum Debian > mirror with just the packages needed by debootstrap and the most important > udebs. I think that this way we could use debian-cd with a bottom-up > approach, without downloading a whole debian mirror.
I have a receipt for building a partial mirror on my web page. Some people use the scripts successfully for FAI and other purposes. See http://people.debian.org/~debacle/ [look for partial mirror]
W. Borgert
W> purposes. See http://people.debian.org/~debacle/ [look for W> partial mirror]
Yes I've read it and I'm currently use that approach. But this solutions sounds me a little bit hackish, and I'd like something specifically designed for this porpoise.
Anyhow thanks a lot for you document and scripts, which I found quite quite useful :)
Free Ekanayaka
> bottom-up approach, without downloading a whole debian mirror.
Take a look at debpartial-mirror. It's in unstable and seems to do what you need.
Andre Luis Lopes
http://groups.google.com/group/linux.debian.user/browse_frm/thread/d1fa7d3fe6164618
Newsgroups: linux.debian.user, linux.debian.maint.boot Date: Tue, 05 Apr 2005
> > for a small system without harddisk I like to run sarge completely > > from CD. Are there any ready-to-use tools or do I have to rely on > > (c)debootstrap+mkisofs+cdrecord? d-i can't help, right?
> You have a few to choose from unless you really mean just sarge > customised to your own spec. Check out: > http://www.xfld.org/Xfld/en/xfld.html[] > http://www.ubuntulinux.org/[]
It's worth noting that the latter's live CD (at least the current version, which will be released properly on Friday) is based on d-i; there's one extra package (casper) and a number of modifications to existing d-i components, basically just to add symlinks for hook scripts.
It'd be interesting to see how much of that could be made applicable to Debian.
Colin Watson
http://groups.google.com/group/linux.debian.devel.cd/browse_frm/thread/77a49557b374c547
Newsgroups: linux.debian.devel.cd, linux.debian.maint.boot Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005
I managed to remaster a the sarge netinst CD following the hints on http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?DebianInstallerModify, w/o changing d-i or the kernel. I just added packages in an "extra" directory using apt-move. Unfortunately, apt does not see the packages in the extra directory. The automatically generated entries in /etc/apt/sources.list are:
deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Sarge_ - Official Snapshot i386 Binary-1 (20050210)]/ extra/dists/testing/main/binary-i386/ deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Sarge_ - Official Snapshot i386 Binary-1 (20050210)]/ unstable contrib main
If I change the first entry into a file entry it seems to work, so I assume that my extra directory is not broken somehow.
Is there a something, I might have forgotton? Does apt have problems with multiple directories on one CD?
Many thanks in advance for any help!
Btw. why does the second line say "unstable", not "testing"?
W. Borgert
Messages 1 - 1 of 1
http://groups.google.com/group/linux.debian.devel.mentors/browse_thread/thread/1f151c7eb45f31a3
Newsgroups: linux.debian.devel.mentors, linux.debian.devel.cd Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2005
We would like to know if there is any way by which we can create an debian distro ISO which contains packages of our choice.
On debian site there r basically 2 ways defined:
Downloading the whole ISO (650 MB) using jigdo or bittorrent.
But the problem is jigdo downloads only standard available ISOs on mirrors.What we want is the customization in the number of and kind of packages present in the ISO.We cananot make a CD set of our own choice in this method.(Can we??)
Using net install.
Well we got the basic minimal ISO from woody(186 MB). But is this supposed to be a live CD ?? or a distribution installer CD? Is the file structure of debian installer CD any different from any other live CDs?
I guess we can get the additional packages we want from the net,after installing this minimal ISO.But the problem is,how then,do we convert the whole thing into an ISO that we want.
> We would like to know if there is any way by which we can create an > debian distro ISO which contains packages of our choice.
This misses the whole CDD (custom debian distribution) angle which is still being worked out but aims to solve this problem:
Take a look at the cdd-dev package (not sure if it's able to build an install CD yet).
You could alsot look at the modified debian-cd scripts used by debian-edu/Skolelinux (Not sure in howfar these modifications have been merged back into the debian-cd package). They build a debian-cd set with the packages reordered so all debian-edu packages are on the first CD (which is otherwise a normal debian-installer CD).
Any detailed questions you have about any of the above are probably best asked on the debian-custom list.
> 1.Downloading the whole ISO (650 MB) using jigdo or bittorrent. > But the problem is jigdo downloads only standard available ISOs on > mirrors.What we want is the customization in the number of and kind of > packages present in the ISO.We cananot make a CD set of our own choice in > this method.(Can we??)
nope, to make you're own CD's look into debian-cd package (and possibly cdd-dev)
> 2.Using net install. > Well we got the basic minimal ISO from woody(186 MB). > But is this supposed to be a live CD ?? or a distribution installer CD?
net-install images are minimal install CD, they are more or less debian-installer + base, with everything else downloaded from a mirror when needed.
> Is the file structure of debian installer CD any different from any other > live CDs?
debian-installer CD's are not liveCD's at all
> I guess we can get the additional packages we want from the > net,after installing this minimal ISO.But the problem is,how then,do we > convert the whole thing into an ISO that we want.
the tools being created by the folks on debian-custom will solve this at some point (if they don't already)
cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis)
> I guess we can get the additional packages we want from the net,after > installing this minimal ISO.But the problem is,how then,do we convert> > the whole thing into an ISO that we want.
Take a look at debian-cd [1]. That is a tool to create Debian CDs; you can include your own package selection and own packages, if you want.
Alexander Schmehl
> I guess we can get the additional packages we want from the net,after > installing this minimal ISO.But the problem is,how then,do we convert > the whole thing into an ISO that we want.
You got some hints from others. I would like to add another
Some lines from `apt-cache show dfsbuild`
Debian From Scratch (DFS) is a live bootable CD that is designed to provide a fully-featured kernel and a fully-featured rescue environment. The rescue environment contains filesystem tools, editors, C development environment, etc. . dfsbuild is the program used to create the DFS CD image. It is highly configurable and can be used to create other custom bootable CD or DVD images. You can use dfsbuild to do something as simple as building a DFS CD with a custom kernel. Or, you can customize the CD to include a completely different set of packages. . dfsbuild works by obtaining packages from your nearest Debian mirror. It will generate an ISO image that contains a bootable Debian system generated by installing those packages. Also, it can place all the .debs and files needed by cdebootstrap in the image. Thus, the generated image can be used to install the base Debian system on a PC as well.
Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo
> We would like to know if there is any way by which we can create an debian distro ISO which contains packages of our choice.
Just to be clear, there is another ISO image somewhere which is just a few megabytes (~10MB). It has the kernel, and the modules, and the installer, but not base (if size is a problem).
Also check out bootcd - run your system from cd without need for disks (and bootcd-* packages). I experimented with this a couple years back.
Justin Pryzby
I've been working around debian-cd, and it's probably your program.
Hardly all you must to know it's here: http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?DebianInstaller (at 18:50 the link is broken!, this morning it was working…)
You will be especially interested in this sections: DebianCustomCD and ModifyImage. In my case, i have follow point per point DebianCustomCD (I'm working in a debian derivate).
A quick reference:
download the debian installer image (i recommend the last one stable netinst, actually d-i rc2).
install it in a prototype system, and add all the programs you want to include on the cd. Well, really you don't need to install the programs, you cand do something like: apt-get install -d program1 program2…. (this downloads the packages without installing) Don't clean /var/cache/apt/archives !!! here you need to keep the .deb's
copy all the contents of the cd to your hard-disk
now you have to syncronize your /var/cache/apt/archives with the pool/ of the cd. I've used apt-move for this task: configure /etc/apt-move.conf and execute apt-move fsck && apt-move update.
At this step you have a pool/ with all the packages you want, you have to generate your "packages" and "releases" files, it's pretty well documented at the wiki.
Now copy the folder backup/dist/sarge/main/intaller-i386/ to the dist/sarge/main/installer/. The folder backup it's created automatically when you run "apt-move fsck".
Now, you have to install debian-cd and…
go to /usr/share/debian-cd/
edit CONF.sh
load to the envairoment the variables: ". CONF.sh"
make distclean (it cleans your temporal directory)
make mirrorcheck (it checks that dependencies of your mirror is ok)
make status (it should write nothing in your screen)
make make bin-list TASK=tasks/yourtask COMPLETE=1 (your task is a file wich list all the programs you want to include on your cd)
make bootable
make bin-images
Voila!
I know that's it's a quick and dirty (dirty, dirty) reference… if you are intereseted read the wiki and ask all you want :-)
Carlos Parra Camargo