Making a custom LiveCD

ShadyMilkman · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2002 Posts: 57

I'm interested in making a bootable LiveCD (i.e. no installation necessary, no hard drive necessary) based off of the programs I have (X, fluxbox, galeon, xine, xmms, gimp, and a few others). Now I realize that there are liveCDs out there that I could probably tweak but I was wondering if anybody could tell me the process I would go through to get this working. I know I'd probably use ISOLINUX to get it booted up and with my kernel, but how do I make a ramdisk and extract the necessary stuff there, and stuff like that. Maybe one of the people that made the gentoo livecd could help me? Thanks.

P.S. I did a google for it and didn't find anything relevant.

n0n · Guru Joined: 13 Jun 2002 Posts: 355

You're right about there being some projects with similar goals. The likeliest one you'll probably find is the LNX-BBC Project, which creates a bootable, fully runnable Linux CD that fits onto a Business-Card sized CD (so it fits in your wallet). The name stands for Linux Bootable Business Card. They've got a cool system called "GAR" which is used to build the system up from scratch, though last time I tried it had some issues - then again, I haven't tried it recently. (sideline: GAR was adopted for use in Gnome installations, too, into something called GARNome, which does things like downloading all the deps for you - GAR is sort of like a different approach to what Portage does, really)

But even if their GAR build system isn't complete, I've had a lot of luck with just tweaking the CD image that they provide. I was just on vacation for a week in Florida, and before I left I modified their image to give me newer versions of Mozilla, OpenSS[HL], etc, including all of my keys, etc, so that I could check email securely without having to do key exchanges and the like. It's actually rather easy to do, and there's a lot of good documentation out there.

And if you're looking to build your own system from scratch, checking out GAR would probably be the best place to start for you, since they'll have already done a lot of the work for you.

Oh, and LNX-BBC was originally forked off from the Linuxcare BBC project, which is another option for you, though I'm not as familiar with it. Also, reading on the Linuxcare page a bit more, it seems that the current version of the Linuxcare BBC isn't really related to the original Linuxcare BBC that I had used. So it might actually be very different now. Anyway, there's some links for you.

ShadyMilkman · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2002 Posts: 57

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks so much. I'm always impressed by the quick, _relevant_ responses I get on these forums.

AutoBot · l33t Joined: 22 Apr 2002 Posts: 968 Location: Usually Out

It is my opinion that the best work being currently done on a livecd is coming from Klaus Knopper (creator of Knoppix), you can find out more from the Knoppix website.
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n0n · Guru Joined: 13 Jun 2002 Posts: 355

Hm, I wasn't aware of Knoppix. Interesting. I looked around on the page for a bit, but didn't find any info as to how the CD was put together. Does he have his CD-building tools available somewhere, so that the CD is more easily customizable? Thanks . . .

AutoBot · l33t Joined: 22 Apr 2002 Posts: 968 Location: Usually Out

Yeah everything is available here, but the german language may be a hinderance.
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