I'd suggest SystemRescueCD. It's upgraded quite often (currently using kernel 2.6.35-x) has a ready to go X11 environment and most useful, it's an up-to-date Gentoo system, so one immediately knows where to look if there are any problems. And it has a well documented (easy) procedure for extending it.
Helmut. On 11/24/10 23:02:10, Grant Edwards wrote: > I need to build a liveCD that boots on as wide a variety of hardware > as is practical. It needs to load one custom kernel module and then > run one console-mode application. Instead of building something from > scratch, I was hoping I might be able to modify an existing liveCD. > > There's no need for support for networking, graphics, or even access > to optical or hard drives. > > The current version of this CD is built sort of from scrach using a > labor-intensive and error-prone process. However, it does produce > something that's small (less that 10MB), and boots fast (around 10 > seconds). But, updating the existing CD with a newer kernel (to gain > support for newer hardware) is difficult. > > I thought about using a customized systemrescuecd, but that takes > ages > to boot (almost 5 minutes). This CD is intended as something a > customer can run to do a quick hardware test, and making them sit > there for 5 minutes to see a 5-second test just isn't going to fly. > > I also looked at the gentoo minimal install CD, but that's still > pretty slow (3-4 minutes), and it's not at all obvious how to add a > kernel module to it. > > Does anybody have an recommendations for a good way to build a small > liveCD with a custom kernel module? > -- Helmut Jarausch Lehrstuhl fuer Numerische Mathematik RWTH - Aachen University D 52056 Aachen, Germany
