On 12/29/2011 11:20 PM, Jeff Sheltren wrote:
2011/12/28 夜神 岩男 <supergiantpotato@yahoo.co.jp mailto:supergiantpotato@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@gmail.com <mailto:larry.brigman@gmail.com> > <mailto:larry.brigman@gmail.com <mailto:larry.brigman@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.
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.