[CentOS-devel] custom iso spin

[夜神 岩男]

On 12/29/2011 11:20 PM, Jeff Sheltren wrote:
> 2011/12/28 夜神　岩男 <supergiantpotato at yahoo.co.jp
> <mailto:supergiantpotato at yahoo.co.jp>>
>
>     On 12/29/2011 02:09 PM, lowlux wrote:
>      > I am also interested in doing this...
>      >
>      > On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 11:21 PM, Larry Brigman
>     <larry.brigman at gmail.com <mailto:larry.brigman at gmail.com>
>      > <mailto:larry.brigman at gmail.com
>     <mailto:larry.brigman at gmail.com>>> wrote:
>      >
>      > I see the small ISO images but I would like
>      > to build something custom but not a live image.
>      >
>      > What tools do you use to create these images?
>      > Is there some documentation on building a custom iso spin?
>      > I would also like to be able to drive the tools.
>
>     I was just about to ask this exact same question. I use livecd-creator
>     and some ks files to create livecds, and that's nice, but I have a need
>     now to create a more complete network-boot installer which includes a
>     lot of changes/different packages.
>
>     And I completely don't remember how to do it anymore. There is a utility
>     for this, and its not livecd-creator (or the gui revisor thing, either)
>     grrrr...
>
> I agree with Scott that it sounds like pxe booting (you could also use
> the netboot iso/usb disk if you prefer) and kickstart sounds like it'll
> meet your needs. If you really want to create a custom installer, that's
> a bit more difficult, but you're probably thinking of the Fedora tools
> like Revisor.
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Spins_Custom

My intent was specifically to get away from livecds, which is all that 
Revisor can do. Its really buggy anyway (putting it lightly).

As a followup, the ISO creation suite for installers that underlies 
everything is part of anaconda-runtime.
/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/buildinstall is what I was looking for.

Getting at these tools was the whole point of my post. I'm not the OP 
here, but I think he was after the same thing.

buildinstall is a script that changes a directory with a 
dependency-complete package list into a bootable file system, ready to 
be iso9660'd -- but as an install media (what we want), *not* as a 
livecd (not what we want).

Cobbler stands on top of buildinstall, yumdownloader and a few other 
things, but doesn't seem to be geared towards installations as much as 
diskless PXE boot for live systems -- though ks can of course be used 
for mass installs, but has its own problems when given a lot of 
non-standard media types to install to and dual- and triple-boot 
systems. Unfortunately this is the problem I have right now.

Anyway, after having run buildinstall I get a noisy build -- noisier 
than I remember it being. The main problems have to do with thinks like 
awk not being linked correctly, or selinux policy files not being found, 
or especially install-info docs not being located. Tracking these down 
is a pain, because apparently the spec files indeed do *not* contain 
complete dependency information... which sucks, but is workable.