QA/Test Days/Live Image

Creating a Test Day Live Image

The following steps outline how to create a Fedora live image based on current Rawhide packages for use during Test Days.

This guide is intended mainly for Fedora QA team
Ordinary users who want to participate on a test day don't have to follow this guide, the pre-built images will be published and available for them to download on a Test Day pages.

1. Install required packages:

   yum install livecd-tools git
   

2. Download the kickstart script used by Fedora 40 by using the F-40 git branch: <pre<noinclude></noinclude>>git clone 'git://git.fedorahosted.org/spin-kickstarts.git' -b f40</pre<noinclude></noinclude>> or if you have done it in the past, just update it: <pre<noinclude></noinclude>>cd spin-kickstarts; git checkout f40; git pull; cd ..</pre<noinclude></noinclude>>
3. OPTIONAL: Create your custom kickstart file my-test-day.ks, if you need some changes from the default configuration: <pre<noinclude></noinclude>> %include spin-kickstarts/custom/qa-test-day.ks
   1. redefine repos as you need (e.g. point it to local mirror with --baseurl, etc)
   2. repo --name=fedora --baseurl=file:/mnt/globalsync/fedora/linux/development/40/$basearch/os/
   3. repo --name=updates --baseurl=file:/mnt/globalsync/fedora/linux/updates/40/$basearch/
   %packages
   1. provide list of packages to be added or removed - dependencies are handled
   2. packageYouWant
   3. wildcardedPackagesYouWant*
   4. @GroupYouWant
   5. -packageYouDontWant
   %end %post
   1. put any shell commands here
   %end </pre<noinclude></noinclude>>
4. Create the live image: <pre<noinclude></noinclude>> livecd-creator -c spin-kickstarts/custom/qa-test-day.ks --releasever 40 --cache /var/cache/live -f testday-YYYY-MM-DD </pre<noinclude></noinclude>> (of course replace spin-kickstarts/custom/qa-test-day.ks with my-test-day.ks if you have created your custom kickstart file)
   

   Different architecture
   You can use setarch command to create a x86 Live CD/DVD on a x86_64 system. Example: setarch i686 livecd-creator <...>. (Or you can hardcode the architecture inside the kickstart by replacing $basearch variable.)

Solving problems

Anaconda dependencies broken

Sometimes the image can't be built because of broken package dependencies. You may solve the problem by removing anaconda package. Anaconda requires a lot of dependencies and it may very often be the culprit. To remove anaconda you just put -anaconda line in the %packages section.

SELinux complaints

For building Test Days LiveCD you must have SELinux installed and enabled. Ideally it should be in the enforcing mode and everything should run fine. In case you have problems with that, you may switch the mode temporarily into permissive mode with this command run as root:

setenforce 0

If that doesn't help, you may also modify your my-test-day.ks kickstart file and after %include line add a directive

selinux --permissive

(Note: Due to RHBZ #547152 you may also need to add /usr/sbin/lokkit inside %packages.)

Now the build should run fine.

Further references

• QA Test Day Spin
• How to create and use a Live CD
• How to write the live image to a USB stick.
• How to write the live image to a CD or DVD media.
• How to load the live image in KVM or qemu.