[CentOS] Created a custom/minimal CentOS 5.x install ISO

Thu May 20 03:03:02 UTC 2010
Kahlil Hodgson <kahlil.hodgson at dealmax.com.au>

On 05/20/2010 11:40 AM, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> On 05/19/2010 02:37 PM, Digimer wrote:
>>
>>     I've been googling for ways to do this, figuring it must be somewhat
>> straight forward, but my google-fu is weak it seems. Can someone point
>> me to a how-to or doc on rolling your own CentOS derivative ISO?
> 
> You can look around for documents on revisor.  I use the attached
> configuration files to generate installable trees.
...
> Once you have revisor installed and the config files in place, you need
> a kickstart file that specifies what packages you want installed.
> Provide that to revisor and it will build the image using the packages
> specified in the kickstart file.
> 
> # revisor --yes --kickstart=/home/gordon/deploy/kickstart/centos5
> --model=c5-x86_64 --install-tree --cli

Great stuff Gordon!  The graphical interface usually crashes on me but
the CLI seems to be pretty solid.

Digimer, some pointers to understanding the sprawl of configuration files.

1. --model=c5-x86_64  defines the section in revisor.conf that is used

2. That section defines

	main = /etc/revisor/conf.d/revisor-c5-x86_64.conf

which is the yum configuration file.  Here you define the repositories
that are going to be sourced for the build.  These can be base repos,
updates, non-centos repos, local repos, local caches, whatever you want.
(Running createrepo on /var/yum/cache can be a starting point for
building snapshot installers for known 'good' systems).

3. --kickstart=/home/gordon/deploy/kickstart/centos5 is the kickstart
file which you use to (principally) define which packages 'must' be
present on the new install disk.  Dependency resolution is performed so
you will usually get more than you specify, and you will get the most
up-to-date packages depending on the repos you specified above.  There
are some options in revisor.conf to control this.

Keep in mind that you are effectively rolling your own distribution this
way and, depending on the quality of the rpms, the more you deviate, the
more likely you are to break things (as I have done a couple of times).

Happy Coaster Burning:-)

Kal