From Fedora Project Wiki
mether * Live CD or DVD's
mether * Regular installation images
metherFedora itself does both
metheras you can see from <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora">http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora</a>
abby87i hope to see a fedora live cd-cum-install cd...would
that be a good idea instead of a plain install cd??
generalBordeauxabby87, i think there are live cds now ..
metherThe live cd's in Fedora have the option to install to
hard disk if that's what you mean
generalBordeauxi mean i downloaded one for F10 Beta ..
abby87mether: yes as in ubuntu
metherknoppix, mempis and so on
metherthe concept itself is not new
abby87in ubuntu u 1st use the live cd and then install it
abby87that gives users chance to try and see if it works well
4 them
metherright. the same thing works for Fedora as well
abby87and then they can proceed with installation
metherPrior to Fedora 7, the tools that does the composes (ie)
turn a set of RPM packages into a regular installation image or live cd
were internal to Red Hat
abby87afaik install cds and live cds are diffferent
metherabby87: not sure what you are referring to. Can we
discuss this later?
abby87mether: oh sure sure
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metherI will be only covering livecd-tools in this session
mj0vymether: does it include revisor also?
metherthere are two other tools
metherpungi which creates regular installation images - either
cd sets or DVD's
metherRevisor which is a graphical frontend that combines the
functionality of livecd-creator and pungi
metherThose we will cover in a later session
metherThough ideally, if you are using revisor, you don't need
much of additional hand holding
* generalBordeaux is currently using revisor to embed media
players in F9
metherFrom Fedora 7 onwards, livecd-tools and pungi are used
to compose the actual distributions so they are well tested and
incrementally gets more features over time as well
metherAt present, both of them use the kickstart file format
metherKickstart files have been used to automate the
installation tasks for quite sometime
metherso it is a well understood format
metherIf you do a yum install livecd-tools
metheryou will find a number of them
metherin /usr/share/livecd-tools
metherWe have the desktop, kde, base desktop ks files etc
abby87does it have a graphical frontend??
metherabby87: the graphical frontend is called revisor
abby87ok
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metherThe interesting new feature introduced for live media is
the concept of inheritance in kickstart
metherThe gnome and kde live cd's share a number of packages
and package groups
metherso both of them inherit the same base desktop ks file
metherRecently we have a new repository of such kickstart files at
mether<a href="https://fedorahosted.org/spin-kickstarts/">https://fedorahosted.org/spin-kickstarts/</a>
metherso if you do a git clone of it, you can find a number of
them
generalBordeauxawesome
metherinheritance is pretty simple
metheryou just add a line similar to %include fedora-live-base.ks
metherat the start of the kickstart file
metherthis is the canonical repository of all kickstart files
used to create the spins - custom distributions that we promote
metherand host in Fedora
abby87that would be as good as making a whole new distro !
awesome .!!
metherthese include xfce, electronics live cd, games and many
others
metherpackages can be included by merely listing their name in
the kickstart file
methergroups can be included by using @ in front
metherfor example, if you want to create a live cd that uses
hindi by default
metherit would be very simple
< mether>
<a href="http://sundaram.fedorapeople.org/spins/livecd-fedora-8-desktop-hindi.ks">http://sundaram.fedorapeople.org/spins/livecd-fedora-8-desktop-hindi.ks</a>
metherhere, I am inheriting a common file at top
metherdefining the default language using the language code
methertimezine and including the hindi-support package group
generalBordeauxdamn simple .. :)
methersimilarly you can do that for all the different Indian
language. it is so simple that i have done it all
mether<a href="http://sundaram.fedorapeople.org/spins/">http://sundaram.fedorapeople.org/spins/</a>
ankursbut we need to have all the packages with us!!!!!
metheryes, of course
ankursok
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abby87mether: is it legally ok to distribute our custom live
cds to other ppl??
metherabby87: I will come to that
abby87ok
metherwith inheritance, not only can you include packages, you
can remove them too
metherfor example,
mether-foo would remove the package named foo
metherUnfortunately you cannnot remove package groups after
inheriting them yet
mether-@foo won't work
metherif it is a single kickstart file, you can merely comment
out or remove that group itself from the kickstart file
metherThe package groups themselves are defined in  a xml file
called comps
metherwhich is used by the Anaconda installer and other tools
metherMore details at
<a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/CompsXml">http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/CompsXml</a>
metherSo far, I have talked only about using the official
Fedora repository but you can very well use third party repositories as well
metherYou can also define a custom comps.xml file and redefine
existing packages or include new package groups
metherwhen doing a compose, the different xml files will be
merged together
metherby livecd-creator
metherdoes that make sense?
generalBordeauxyeah..
metherseveral such custom derivative distributions already exist
methermythdora combines Fedora plus other third party
repositories to provide a simple out of box solution for mythtv users
abby87ohh thats splendid
metherNot only can you include multiple repositories but also
introduce configuration changes
metherkickstart format include many configuration directives
for common usages
metherfor example, disabling or enabling the firewall
metherif you need additional changes, you can include any
shell scripts in %post section
metherHere is another example
mether<a href="ftp://ftp.infradead.org/pub/spins/omega-livecd-desktop.ks">ftp://ftp.infradead.org/pub/spins/omega-livecd-desktop.ks</a>
generalBordeauxmether, can i write custom scripts in any
language ..?
generalBordeauxin that %post thingy ..
metheryes
abby87thats so cool
generalBordeaux:O
metherkickstart doesnt care
metherit wont parse it. it will let whatever is on your system
handle that
metherso if you want to include python scripts, as long as you
have a python interpreter, it will work fine
generalBordeauxyeah
methertraditionally, using anything other than simple bash
scripts can quickly become unmanageable if you are not careful. So dont
go wild too much
metherlivecd-creator is itself in python
metherand uses yum API and pykickstart
metherto do some of the core tasks
generalBordeauxthat may be a nice trick to place root kits ;)
metherIf you do a compose of Fedora and any custom packages,
you cannot call the end result Fedora anymore
abby87that would resemble a MS product\
generalBordeauxabby87, lol
metherWe are now working on new trademark guidelines which
would give you more flexibility. Details at
User:Pfrields/New_trademark_guidelines</a>
methermeanwhile, we have two packages that allow you to
rebrand the distribution very easily
metherthese are generic-logos and generic-release
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abby87that is soooo ubercool !
metherIf you replace fedora-logos and fedora-release with
these packages, you wont see the Fedora branding anywhere
metherWe already dont brand the default theme with Fedora
items to facilitate derivative distributions
metherso this process is pretty easy
metherof course, if you want your own logos and name, you have
to create your own rpm packages as well
metherAdditional troubleshooting tips:
metherIf you are trying to compose a live cd with SELinux
enabled, put the host system in SELinux permissive mode
metherThis is fixed in the very latest rawhide but previous
releases
metheryou still need it in permissive mode to actually work
metherThis is because, livecd-creator basically installs rpm
packages in a chroot, wraps it up in a ext3 filesystem image which is
then compressed by using squashfs
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metherSince the SELinux policy in the compose can be differnet
from the host system, this results in conflicts
metherso you might have permission issues
metherBasically boot with SELinux is enforcing mode
metherbut just before doing the compose, run setenforce 0
metherand then livecd-tools
metherThere is a howto with more details at
FedoraLiveCD/LiveCDHowTo
metheralso when running livecd-creator
methermake sure you specify a cache directory
metherotherwise, every instance will use a different cache
directory by default resulting in redownloads of packages
metherlivecd-creator
--config=/usr/share/livecd-tools/livecd-fedora-minimal.ks
--cache=/home/foo/liveimage-cache
metherfor example
metherIf you have a local mirror, a compose takes about 30 minutes
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methernow, questions time:
generalBordeauxhmm
abby87that is like lego for linux
methertrue. you can rearrange existing components and get
something new pretty fast
metherOLPC, Mythdora, many of the custom spins use similar
tools to get something new out of Fedora
metherif you create a live cd or dvd, you will automatically
find a
abby87mether: will this work for creating a complete kde live cd??
metherinstall to hard disk icon on the desktop
metherclicking on that will call Anaconda to do the installation
metherthe difference is that, it dumps the entire image to
hard disk
metherthere is no option to select packages
metherit is also pretty fast because of that
methertakes about 3 or 4 minutes to complete the entire
installation
metherwith regular installation images, you have more
flexibility but it also takes a bit more time
metherabby87: yes, we already provide kde live's created using
livecd-creator
mether<a href="http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora">http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora</a>
metheralso xfce as ell
metherwell*
metherYou can find a list of custom spins at
<a href="http://spins.fedoraproject.org/">http://spins.fedoraproject.org/</a>
abby87excellent
metherany other questions
metherok. we will wrap up then
methersee you all next week. I will post the agenda to Fedora
India list
abby87thanks
methernp