The vsido remastery thread

[Digit]

this thread is intended for any and all issues surrounding remastery.  aka, roll-your-own.  aka various other things too, but basicaly the ability to make your own transferable/sharable/reuseable iso of your own changed version of a distro. 

debian-live, remastersys, refracta, relinux, linuxlive scripts, clonezilla, tar, dd, chroot, squashfs, aufs, unionfs, bootloaders, installers, configs, personal file exclude lists, and so on.

but perhaps the overarching theme intended for this thread, is perhaps to probe for "the best"* method of remastery. 

*everyone having different needs, the best, can be a great many things.  matters of convenience and ease, control and customiseability, universality and distro-agnosticism.   



which method is best?  which have you used?  what are the benefits of one over another for you?  are there any methods i left out?

[VastOne]

Excellent thread Digit.  I am looking forward to the discussions from this one

I have tried refracta and need to give it another go...

I have used debian-live but have never gotten the installer to work

I use remastersys for VSIDO and except for the installer it works just the way I want it to work..

I am going to work today on using a LMDE installer that I have that works in tests... it is a full fledged installer .. the only thing is it says LMDE everywhere when you use it and I need to remove that branding

[ozitraveller]

I'm also looking into this subject, and the following list  is what I have found to be the most helpful.

http://live.debian.net/manual/3.x/html/live-manual.en.html
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=88427
http://docs.kali.org/live-build/live-build-a-custom-kali-iso
http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2013/03/29/how-to-live-build-a-custom-kali-linux-iso-for-kde-lxde-xfce-and-e17/

I have a live-build environment already setup. I have recently tested the install for a sid xfce desktop iso that I built.

What I wanted was the latest installer (Wheezy), and all the packages from sid. I have found that if specify the installer should be either squeeze or wheezy then the installer didn't work. The sid one must be broken.

This is a work in-progress, so there is still much to do, but I can post the scripts I have so far.

I this the Kali scripts are the most likely source for further progress for me!

[lizbeth]

Well, linux mint debian edition uses a great installer, have you considered it?

[Digit]

i used to be all about the remastersys.   then the rough days came.  ^_^

i had a brief flash in the pan with debian-live stuff, got myself a single command equivalent to remastersys in it, and then they moved the goal posts and had to try to get that again...  that kind of thing is a stupendous put-off to me.   words couldnt convey the rage.  XD

but, it's worth overturning every stone, and some stones, multiple times. ^_^  so here's that stuff:  http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=51626

how is remastersys these days?  i struggle to keep track of that rollercoaster... dramas settling down and future of it looking up again?  i think that was what i heard last at least.


havnt remastered a deb based system for a while.  been getting that itch a lot more recently.  more than 99% certain it will be vsido as a base next time i do tho. 

gotta get my tabular boonad in order for that release.  hehe.  yusss. 




ps, another link with resources on remastery from my travels... mostly off topic for debian and vsido, but likely more than a few gems rich in insights there, so on that basis, i link here: https://github.com/Digit/witch/issues/5

[falldown]

Digit I recently dove into live-built and it is a very robust build system.

As far as Remastersys goes I can say that fragadelic took a ton of crap from people who
were using his program for free.. that and for medical reasons. 
I can see where he is coming from.     

[VastOne]

Remastersys is source code, free to anyone who wants to use it.  I use it for VSIDO and it works as we see it.  I have also altered the code to what I wanted to see, it is simple bash.  In the future I plan to dive deeper into that code and build it even more

There is no one at Debian who claims to be 'the one', same as here at VSIDO and remastersys became just that.  If you treat people like a dick, expect the same in return. 

[VastOne]

Here we see exactly the path that remastersys has taken and a change from gpl v2 to 50.00 US

So much for FOSS

[lwfitz]

^ Cant say Im surprised. I think most of us have similar feelings about that whole situation.

[Digit]

oh hey, yeah, thought this was useful to the likes of this thread too:

decruftings:  http://vsido.org/index.php/topic,496.msg6083.html#msg6083

[VastOne]

^ Incredible journey, thanks for sharing that!

If you care to share, I would like to see your remade refracta scripts...

Also, does the antix tools have a git site?

[statmonkey]

Another great ectropy post thank you.  FWIW I have gone down a similar path and come to a different (I think sometimes e' loses me) path.  Basically that is writing my own.  My instance is of course not to make a distro but to be able to run something on one box, reduce or eliminate the garbage on that box in a go and then back it up to a thumb or pendrive as installable on a different box while still having the flexibility of not caring for the most part if that box is a RasPi/Laptop or my test box which is an old Modem that I turned into a headless server.  Considering my goal, I think it becomes clearer why I am so excited about what VastOne has done here, it adds a sizable weapon to my arsenal and gets me much closer to my goal as far as an end result.

Remastersys I gave up on early but refracta has given me a good base to build on and I used some parts of BBit as a model but didn't like the inflexibility.  I can get pretty close of course just rsyncing a tailored backup and installing an iso but that is not ideal.  From a kiss standpoint I really hadn't thought of nor have I considered what you can do with the skel dirs.  Good thought.  This will keep me in contemplation for a few hours, nice post.

[VastOne]

^ The most important part of VSIDO and work that I do is within /etc/skel

[Digit]

To date, this thread's posts & links cover a confusingly wide range of "kinda overlapping" stuff.
Imagine someone clicking to read the forums.debian.net link ...then clicking and reading "mumble... witch... exherbo".

witch got mentioned once, and i dont see where you saw mention of exherbo from this thread, particularly from the debian forum link i posted... unless you went a few levels deeper down that particular rabbit hole.   are you saying i shouldnt mumble or something?   (not sure how one mumbles in text, maybe you meant ramble... and that's intrinsic to my being, cant/wont stop)

~

anyhoo, thnx for the rest of your post.    gald to see you got into the swing of the thread with aplomb.  ^_^
top stuff.

[statmonkey]

ectropy.  You sir are prolific.  I am struggling to keep up with everything.  Lots in this post I find of value, we seem to be doing similar things and pursuing a similar goal.  Regarding BB.  I did the same thing, I too saw the plugins and I think what I really meant was not so much a question of it's flexibility as reading through it saying to myself "hmm, that is not the way I would do that or I think I have a better idea or I don't want to be limited to that solution but would add or subtract this or that". In the end I think that is less a criticism of BB than it is my own personal prefs.  I would rather pull together my own "bleaching" process that is both more and less thorugh and targets the areas that are of need to me.  What I do appreciate about it is the fact that it is not a black box.  I hate when someone provides a "cleaning" solution that doesn't let me see what it is really doing.  Scares the bejeeebus out of me.   Yep, I am weird.