How to rebuild livecd-ng

[mepython]

I was able to successfully create livecd using livecd-ng program. Now I want to recompile kernel and add some more packages. Can I do it without runnning "livecd-ng gentoo-basic delete" command?

I see a lot of potential in livecd-ng. Will this evolve in to something like knoppix with customized compiled cd?

[Squinky86]

from my failed attempts at livecd-ng, It looks like the answer is "no." Could you post the exact steps you used in making a livecd? Many people are having trouble; after I build, initrd fails. Thanks!

[mepython]

Here are few things which I can recall now:

livecd requires cloop, I used knoppix cloop-0.68. This utility does not use ucl compression and hence I modified livecd-ng scripts to use cloop.exe instead of gcloop_ucl.exe and same in extraction utility. Also in order to compile cloop, I change folder to 0.68 from 0.66.

You need to copy busybox-0.60.5.tar.bz2 and busybox-0.60.5.tar.bz2 in a new folder "archives" where you are running livecd-ng command

You need to create a .livecd-ng file which is something like following:

CD_TEMPROOT=/data2/tmp # where to build iso (need ~1GB)
CD_STAGELOC=/data/iso # where to download the stage tarball to or put iso you have downloaded
CD_DISTDIR=/usr/portage/distfiles # location to get distfiles
CD_PORTDIR=/usr/portage # portage tree to use for CD


Copy /etc/livecd/profiles in to some other directory, you need to modify few files to suites your needs. Specially take close look at seetings files in gentoo-basic and global directory. You will very like to change LOOP_SIZE value to something hire than what it has

I couldn't able to use stage1 with livecd (couldn't emerge source due to circular dependancy). This was solve when I use stage3 for my base

For reason I don't fully understand, livecd fails when I try to build bigger size livecd. I was able to fix this by changing value in create_compress_loop.c file:

******************************************
{ /* Search for largest block rather than estimate. KK. */
int i;
for(i=0;i<total_offsets-1;i++)
largest_block=MAX(largest_block,
(ntohl(cloop_dev.offsets[i+1])
-ntohl(cloop_dev.offsets[i])));
/* Following line added by me to fix buffer overrun problem. */
largest_block -= 2000;
printk("%s: %s: %u blocks, %u bytes/block, largest block is %lu bytes.\n",
cloop_name, file, ntohl(cloop_dev.head.num_blocks),
ntohl(cloop_dev.head.block_size), largest_block);
}

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This thing came after spending more than few days of unsuccessful tries. But it works very nicely now. I created different livecd images with different packages and even X system and it works. vmware is your best friend to test this. (you can run vmware from iso image).

I am still in search for cloop_ucl utility used by livecd-ng. Where can I get it? Another idea I got from Knoppix and Morphix remaster cd is creating build and newbuild folder so that if we need to add packages or change some values, we don't have to start from sketch. I am willing to spend some time making this utility more modularized so that it is easier to recreate. Please give me your ideas and suggestion.