Remaster your own live installer, live iso

works with ubuntu too... Ubuntu Live CD Customization


Requirements

apt-get install squashfs-tools

Description

Fetch your favorite iso, in the following examples we will take puredyne-911-carrot_and_coriander iso to show that this procedures can apply to a lot of different isos/systems.

The basic procedure is simple:

HOWTO

sudo puredyne.iso /mnt -o loop

mkdir extract-cd

rsync --exclude=/live/filesystem.squashfs -a /mnt/ extract-cd

sudo unsquashfs /mnt/live/filesystem.squashfs
sudo mv squashfs-root edit
sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf edit/etc/
sudo cp /etc/hosts edit/etc/

sudo mount --bind /dev/ edit/dev
sudo chroot edit

mount -t proc none /proc
mount -t sysfs none /sys
mount -t devpts none /dev/pts

''
??? Is this repeated for error?
???sudo unsquashfs /mnt/live/filesystem.squashfs
???sudo mv squashfs-root edit
''

Just to be sure not to have locales problems during installation of new packages export 2 system variables:

export HOME=/root
export LC_ALL=C

You also need to do this as root (that's for some reasons connected with a couple of dbus bugs):

dbus-uuidgen > /var/lib/dbus/machine-id

dpkg-divert --local --rename --add /sbin/initctl
ln -s /bin/true /sbin/initctl

That's all!

Suggestions

When you want to remove packages remember to use purge I investigated a bit the matter, not enough to know whats going on but enough to know is a good practice.

Once in the chroot start poking:

# refresh your list
apt-get update
# some must have
apt-get install htop modconf
# some multimedia 
apt-get install cinelerra sox twolame mpeg2dec a52dec libsox-fmt-all a52dec darkice darksnow

Closing

aptitude clean
rm -rf /tmp/* ~/.bash_history
rm /etc/resolv.conf
rm /var/lib/dbus/machine-id
rm /sbin/initctl
dpkg-divert --rename --remove /sbin/initctl
dpkg -l > packages.txt
umount /proc
umount /sys
umount /dev/pts

sudo umount edit/dev
sudo mv edit/packages.txt extract-cd/live/

Tasks to do

Done

The following NEW packages will be installed:
  openoffice.org-help-en-gb openoffice.org-help-en-us openoffice.org-help-fr openoffice.org-help-it openoffice.org-help-pt 
  openoffice.org-l10n-af openoffice.org-l10n-common{a} openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb openoffice.org-l10n-en-za openoffice.org-l10n-fr 
  openoffice.org-l10n-it openoffice.org-l10n-pt openoffice.org-l10n-sw 
0 packages upgraded, 13 newly installed, 0 to remove and 35 not upgraded.
Need to get 67.7MB/68.0MB of archives. After unpacking 234MB will be used.