On Tuesday 07 July 2009 17:24:30 Allan Lyons wrote: > On Tue, Jul 07, 2009 at 04:48:24PM -0500, Joseph Rawson wrote: > > I have been using live-helper to build the images that I've been using. > > The images work well in either livecd or pxe environment. They are also > > able to be used on removable usb drives, but I haven't tested that yet. > > That is another solution. We wouldn't have to worry about compiling > anything since it is already done. The disadvantage might be when we need > a newer kernel for example to support some newer hardware. > And that does happen from time to time. Fortunately, debian has a pretty decent method of making kernel packages from the upstream source, using make-kpkg. On top of that, the live-helper system supports using a hand built kernel, and sometimes that method is preferable. > > That's about all that I can remember right now. I've been using this > > method since the end of last year, and I haven't had any problems. > > Did you have a bit more documentation about what you actually did? Do you > build and image and then use the last bit of the Makefile to create the > ISO, etc.? > This is a little bit difficult for me to answer, as I don't use live-helper in the way it was designed to be used. What I do is use paella to install the chroot system, then I touch a couple of stamps to make live-helper skip that part, and continue with generating the live image. For me, this is much easier, but I'm trying to integrate unattended with paella so I can install both debian and windows systems from the same live installer. My goal is to make a server that small businesses can use as the main component of their local network, and act as a firewall, file/web/email/whatever server, and perform disaster recovery (or easily add new machines), etc.
Before I started using paella to install the chroot, I was just using live-helper in the standard way, which is pretty easy. I start with an empty config tree, created with lh_config. Then I fill config/chroot_local-includes/ with the files from unattended, such as the nt5x-install script and the ntldr files, the /etc/master file and others. I create a file called config/chroot_local-packageslists/unattended and add the packages that I want to install (there aren't many here, as a debootstrapped debian system contains most of what is used in the linuxboot.iso). IIRC, I think I just added parted, smbfs, smbclient, dmidecode, and other packages that I use frequently, such as xemacs and rsync. I modify the config files in the config/ directory to build the image type I want (net, iso, or usb). For the net image, I also have to fill out a few more variables in the config for the nfs host, path, etc. The above paragraph may sound like a lot, but it's not really that much. I only make use of about 10% of what live-helper is capable of. Live-helper is a very complex and versatile tool that can do some very interesting things. > What would it take to change the Makefile to build images this way instead? Not much. Basically, all that needs to be done is make a small tree in the svn repository, and use a shell script consisting of: #!/bin/sh mkdir live pushd live svn export svn://path/to/live-config config # maybe lh_config --option1 --option2 etc. lh_build ------- The resulting image would be in live/binary, and if you built a net image, there would also be a live/tftpboot directory that you copy the contents to /var/lib/tftboot. If it's an iso image, it will be at live/binary/binary.iso (or something close, I usually use net images). I posted the config that I was using back in November to the unattended-users list. This is before I started using paella to install the chroot. I'm going to attach it to this mail also. It's not up to date, but it might give you a better idea of how simple it is. Most of the directories in the tarball are empty, and can be ignored. > > Allan. > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- >--- Enter the BlackBerry Developer Challenge > This is your chance to win up to $100,000 in prizes! For a limited time, > vendors submitting new applications to BlackBerry App World(TM) will have > the opportunity to enter the BlackBerry Developer Challenge. See full prize > details at: http://p.sf.net/sfu/Challenge > _______________________________________________ > unattended-devel mailing list > unattended-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-devel -- Thanks: Joseph Rawson
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