[wplug] Live CD

[Edward Walter]

I've done a number of these for a project I'm working on.  There are a 
couple of things to watch out for:

1) The kernel in the isolinux's miniroot must match the custom built 
kernel for your distribution.
2) The modules inside the miniroot must also match your custom 
distribution's modules.
3) You'll need to rebuild cloop.o to match your new kernel version... 
and that also needs included in the miniroot file.
4) You'll want to remove anything that you consider cruft... it speeds 
up the rate at which the compressed filesystem is built and reduces the 
chances that your image will be to big to fit on a CD.  (typically, for 
a full 700 MB CD, it takes me approx 30 minutes to build the compressed 
filesystem)
5) You'll want to have enough memory to build the compressed  filesystem 
image without having to swap... the memory required depends on how big 
your image is.  Otherwise, things get really slow  (worse than the 30 
minutes described above).

Those were the big gotchas I ran into.  Knoppix statically links most of 
the mainstream SCSI modules into the kernel.  I'm not sure what else 
they link in like that.  Your best bet is to work off the sources from 
kernel.org and the kernel config from your Knoppix CD (in /boot).  I've 
seen some weirdness trying to patch against the Debian kernel sources.

Note: It's worth investing in some CDRWs for this.  The first couple 
times you build these, the likelihood of producing a coaster is pretty high.

Good luck!

-Edward Walter




Robert Ball wrote:

> Hello,
> I am interested in building a custom (Apps, window manager) linux boot 
> CD similar to Knoppix.  I would like to have SE Linux integrated into 
> the kernel as well.  Has anyone on da list had any experience with 
> this sort of thing?  There arent that many insightful guides on the 
> internet describing how to do this with a modified kernel. Thanks in 
> advance
> -Rob
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