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General Support - Remastering question

Vinnie - 17.08.2006, 22:10 Uhr
Titel: Remastering question

I took a wack at trying to remaster kanotix-easter-rc4 the other day (using info from knoppix- and kanotix- related sources.) The process makes sense to me and things progressed uneventfully until I got to the "mkisofs... | create_compressed_fs... > outfile" step. The stderr of the creat_compressed_fs command was giving me feedback in the form of "% of the process done" until it got to about 95% (or so.) The system froze and became unresponsive requiring a hard reset. I repeated the procedure several times (trying different options to the two commands based on the various howto's) but got the same result every time.

I should probably mention that I was doing this in a live-cd boot session and that I was using a 40GB hord-drive (mounted on hda1) to hold the mastering directories (usually newcd / source / etc. depending on the howto.) I should probably also mention that most howto's say the syntax should be "create_compressed_fs - 65536 > outfile", however, this causes the command to report improper syntax, and it says it's defaulting to "-B -m" instead. I tried various combinations using -m -s -b and managed to get rid of the syntax complaints several times, but still got the frozen machine sometime between 90% and 95%.

Any clues for a remastering n00b?
Smilie

ockham23 - 17.08.2006, 22:37 Uhr
Titel:

This is a command I took from the Kanotix wiki. I used it successfully with Kanotix-2005-03 (that was about a year ago).

Code:

mkisofs -pad -l -r -J -v -V \"KNOPPIX\" -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -b boot/grub/iso9660_stage1_5 -c boot/grub/boot.cat -hide-rr-moved -o /mnt/hda3/KNOPPIX.iso /mnt/hda3/master 

The source directory structure is
/mnt/hda3/master/boot
/mnt/hda3/master/KNOPPIX

/mnt in 2005-03 = /media in Easter-RC4

It doesn't generate a check sum, though. Maybe you can get this bit of code from the Knoppix wiki (www.knoppix.net).

If you get it working, send me a private message with the steps you took. I'd like to take another shot at remastering, but the developers don't want users to do it, so it's difficult to find up-to-date information. There's still a how-to in the wiki, but it's confusing (maybe on purpose?).

Maybe you can even get cheat code "unionfs" to work; somehow it seems to get lost when remastering the cd.

Good luck!

Vinnie - 17.08.2006, 23:47 Uhr
Titel: Re-mastering is frowned upon?

I haven't gotten to that step yet Smilie

The command you reference builds the final ISO image. I am having a problem with the step *before* that, the creation of the compressed-fs - example:

mkisofs -R -U -V "Knoppix with difference" -publisher "SomeDeveloper (coder@some.edu)" -hide-rr-moved -cache-inodes -no-bak -pad source/KNOPPIX | nice -5 /usr/bin/create_compressed_fs - 65536 > master/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX

The above is one of several variations that I have tried without success.

BTW-
I'm surprised to hear that the developers don't want people to create personal ISO's. If that's true I'll be moving to another platform. I've read about some others that have built-in remastering capabilities with a software pre-load closer to what I would like. I liked kanotix because it 90% supported my thinkpad T43 "out of the box" (especially ipw2200 wireless with WPA) - but I'm sure I could get my devices all working in SLAX, or Knoppix, or ubuntu or... well you get the idea Smilie

So if there are any developers lurking - what's the scoop? Is it true that you don't want people remastering kanotix?

ockham23 - 17.08.2006, 23:52 Uhr
Titel: RE: Re-mastering is frowned upon?

Vinnie, let me rephrase my statement before we create a fuss: They don't encourage users to do it, and they don't help them if they do it anyway. If you manage to do it on your own, it's fine.

ockham23 - 18.08.2006, 00:14 Uhr
Titel:

The compression was done with mksquashfs:

Code:

mksquashfs /mnt/hda3/source/KNOPPIX /mnt/media/master/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX -info

This is from a script that combined compression with making the iso file. The script was in the wiki too, but it looks like it got cut off during migration.

Vinnie - 18.08.2006, 00:34 Uhr
Titel:

I'll give that a try and get back to you

thanks

Vinnie - 18.08.2006, 01:58 Uhr
Titel: Good News / Bad News

I have good news and I have bad news...

The good news is that your commands (mkisofs / mksquashfs) work (at least they complete without errors. I produced an ISO image, which I burned with nero and it booted successfully.

The bad news is that when I type "vi" in a konsole I get "bash: vi: command not found"

I tried "whereis vi" which came back with 3 full-paths, all of which return the same error when invoked:

bash: /usr/bin/vi: Too many levels of symbolic links

So the bad news is not all that bad - I mean there's enough of a system there that it booted into KDE with most obvious things working (display, keyboard, mouse, network - I could ping google.com, for instance.)

So it seems there is some minor problem with symbolic links. I seem to remember reading something about this somewhere. I'll poke around and see if I can find the answer. If you know anything about it, post here and I'll keep checking back...

Thanks for your help

slh - 18.08.2006, 02:21 Uhr
Titel:

ockham23 hat folgendes geschrieben::

If you get it working, send me a private message with the steps you took. I'd like to take another shot at remastering, but the developers don't want users to do it, so it's difficult to find up-to-date information. There's still a how-to in the wiki, but it's confusing (maybe on purpose?).

It's a wiki, why don't you (or anyone who's interested in that) fix/ enhance/ comment it? We have neither written or obfuscated that article and don't intend to change it either.

slam - 18.08.2006, 07:14 Uhr
Titel:

Zitat:

Vinnie, let me rephrase my statement before we create a fuss: They don't encourage users to do it, and they don't help them if they do it anyway. If you manage to do it on your own, it's fine.

And - before a misleading myth is started here - nobody here will stop you re-mastering, Kanotix is open source after all. However, you should understand why we don't encourage and support it:

1) Re-mastering a fine tuned Linux distribution is definitely not trivial, and this is specially true for Kanotix. If other distributions encourage you to do so - that's fine. However, most howtos I have seen on the net are not complete or even false, and will not work with Kanotix.

2) Kano & team are very careful with selecting and configuring a stable combination of drivers, kernel and applications. If some driver or application is not included by default, there is almost always a very good reason.

3) We strive hard with a growing team of volunteers to give fast and high class support in our FAQ, the Manuals, this Forum and the IRC. That's hard enough with stock Kanotix - but would become impossible if people expect us to support their re-mastering adventures.

4) If you finally managed to successfully create your personal re-master, the only person profiting is you. If you instead contribute and share possible improvements with us and work with us on integrating them into Kanotix, you are giving something back to the Kanotix community. That way you might help making Kanotix better - and not just your personal re-master. After all, that's the core of free and open source software - right?

5) If you have commercial needs for a re-mastered Kanotix (and those usually are the only situations where a re-master really is the best solution to a problem), you should contact Kano directly.

Greetings,
Chris

ockham23 - 18.08.2006, 08:16 Uhr
Titel:

@slh+slam: Ok, I'll stop spreading myths. But the wiki article on remastering (I only found a version in German) is in a sorry state, and polarstern's script "iso.sh" is completely gone.

@Vinnie: That's a strange error. I created a reiserfs formatted partition for remastering, mounted it with mount -o rw /dev/hda3 /mnt/hda3 and used cp -a source_directory destination_directory to copy the files from cd to hd. I had pieced this together from the Kanotix and Knoppix wikis, and it seemed to work.

Maybe there are some other users who can contribute to this "unsupported" endeavor. Has anybody successfully remastered Easter-RC4?

mzilikazi - 18.08.2006, 16:21 Uhr
Titel:

The easiest way to set up a remaster is to use kanopener. Create a partition suitaible for remastering, enable unionfs on live cd and run kanopener.

Code:

$ su

# fix-unionfs

# apt-get update

# apt-get install kanotix-toolkit

# kanopener -t /dev/hda6

Then you can chroot or even boot directly into the remaster.

Vinnie - 18.08.2006, 16:23 Uhr
Titel:

ockham23-

I used a (default) ext2 fs. I don't think it matters, though. The symlinks are intact after I copy them from /KNOPPIX (I use "cp -Rp /KNOPPIX/* source") where "source" is in the cwd which is also the root of the mounted ext2-fs. I agree, it is strange. I noticed that /etc/alternatives/vi usually points to "/usr/bin/vim" but on my remaster, it points to /KNOPPIX/<something> - I forget the path right now but I'll check next time I boot from it.

So it would seem to be happening at the mksquashfs or mkisofs step.

My current procedure looks like this (comments removed):

***WARNING TO THE READER***
THIS PROCEDURE IS *NOT* WORKING
IN ITS CURRENT FORM. IT PRODUCES
A RELEASE WITH BROKEN SYMLINKS
***DO *NOT* USE THIS PROCEDURE***

This is all done in a live-cd boot session as root (via "su -")

# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt
# cd /mnt
# mkdir source newcd newcd/KNOPPIX
# cp -Rp /cdrom/boot newcd
# cp -Rp /cdrom/index.html newcd
# cp -Rp /KNOPPIX/* source

[HERE'S WHERE YOU "chroot source" AND TWEAK]

# mksquashfs source newcd/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX -info
# mkisofs -pad -l -r -J -v -V "KNOPPIX" -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -b boot/grub/iso9660_stage1_5 -c boot/grub/boot.cat -hide-rr-moved -o mynew.iso newcd

See any glaring problems with this?
TIA

ockham23 - 18.08.2006, 22:23 Uhr
Titel:

Two things:
1. mzilikazi's advice to apt-get kanotix-toolkit looks very promising. You should download it and analyze the scripts. At least I will do so over the weekend.
2. When you chroot, do you have internet access to apt-get update && apt-get install?

Vinnie - 19.08.2006, 00:22 Uhr
Titel: No progress to report, yet...

ockham23 hat folgendes geschrieben::

kanotix-toolkit appears to install only kanopener which is a tool that, (among other things), appears to be useful only if you have a working re-mastering procedure (which we don't)
(I'm sure it will come in handy later)

I installed kanotix-toolkit / kanopener on my laptop while booted from my symlink-challenged remastered cd - so I guess the answer to "2." is yes (although I haven't actually tried.)

For now I am concentrating on figuring out why squashfs is wrecking symbolic links. There is no option that appears to be related, and I can't get create_compressed_fs to work, either...

I'll probably spend a few hours on it this weekend. If I get anywhere, I'll post here.

mzilikazi - 19.08.2006, 22:18 Uhr
Titel:

ockham23 hat folgendes geschrieben::

2. When you chroot, do you have internet access to apt-get update && apt-get install?

Indeed.

Gowator - 20.08.2006, 16:06 Uhr
Titel:

slam hat folgendes geschrieben::

Zitat:

Vinnie, let me rephrase my statement before we create a fuss: They don't encourage users to do it, and they don't help them if they do it anyway. If you manage to do it on your own, it's fine.

Slam,
I'm really perfectly happy with 1,2,3,5 ....
What is IMHO missing is just an option on #4....
Specifically its things like user settings or pppoe password etc.
Theoretically all this could be stuck on a USB key.... but there is some stuff which is kinda frustrating such as the resolution (especially in widescreen format's) or dial-up settings, often strings of meaningless letters and numbers.

What would be REALLY COOL is a way to actually take the stuff you usually have to have in a permanant home and be able to actually apply this to a remaster.... I don't mean adding/removing apps or anything major.. simply so I can boot just from the CD and not CD + USB key....

I honestly think a lot less people would be bothered about remastering if they could just change this.

Another silly point would be just to change the grub entries.... I fully appreciate why (de) is #1 language choice but its a pain not to just be able to stick in the CD and leave it to reboot....
I guess I could learn German Sehr glücklich

but its probably the only Western European language I can't function in .... I can stumble through es,it, no,dk,se obviously fr and bluff my way in ne perhaps and pretent pt is es.... but de is really the hardest for me to bluff my way through....

I know its minor but Ive forgotten the numer of times I do this and end up rebooting....

ockham23 - 20.08.2006, 18:30 Uhr
Titel:

Gowator, there's already enough information in this thread to help you with the grub annoyance. The Kanotix cd holds two folders, "KNOPPIX" and "boot". The KNOPPIX folder contains a large compressed image file which cannot be modified without the special knowledge that the developers prefer no to share with us. The other folder, however, holds uncompressed files. Among those you'll find the file /boot/grub/menu.lst. This is the file you have to edit in order to customize cheat codes and boot options.

So, all you have to do is copy the contents of KNOPPIX/ and boot/ from the cd to temporary folders on the hard drive, edit your copy of /boot/grub/menu.lst to include the cheat codes and boot options that you like, and roll it all up into a new iso file from which you can create a bootable cd. I summarized this procedure in my first answer to Vinnie's question. If you do this running the live cd, the copy command even unpacks and uncompresses the KNOPPIX image file automatically.

Unfortunately, the iso file of Easter-RC4 already has 670 megabytes, so there isn't much space left on the cd. You could nevertheless try to create config.tbz and home.img files with the live cd and place them in the root directory of the new iso file, then edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and add cheat codes "home=scan myconfig=scan". I haven't tried it myself, but this may give you the "one cd solution" that you're looking for.

Including pre-configured pppoe connections is probably more difficult and would at least require to uncompress the KNOPPIX file to edit single files in it, either manually or by customizing Kanotix inside a chroot environment as Vinnie has mentioned. Alternatively, you could try to modify copies of either /usr/sbin/pppoeconf or /usr/sbin/my-pppoeconf with static values and copy the resulting script to your persistent home folder.

mzilikazi - 21.08.2006, 03:56 Uhr
Titel:

ockham23 hat folgendes geschrieben::

Unfortunately, the iso file of Easter-RC4 already has 670 megabytes, so there isn't much space left on the cd. You could nevertheless try to create config.tbz and home.img files with the live cd and place them in the root directory of the new iso file, then edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and add cheat codes "home=scan myconfig=scan". I haven't tried it myself, but this may give you the "one cd solution" that you're looking for.

Well you could always burn to DVD. Winken

Also you might want to look at Grow Knoppix which allows for custom user content.

paradocs - 21.08.2006, 06:06 Uhr
Titel:

Thanks for mentioning Grow Knoppix.
Although it is not remastering,
it just might be what you need
for hands free booting and
to distribute a project on Kanotix.

When I get time I will:
1) give better documentation
2) name it Grow Kanotix

Kanotix provides superior performance as
a live CD and with the union file system.

Best Wishes
paradocs

piper - 21.08.2006, 06:18 Uhr
Titel:

Yes I was looking at that too paradocs, thanks Winken

ockham23 - 21.08.2006, 08:35 Uhr
Titel:

@paradocs: Is it possible to edit/add boot options for grub?

EDIT: After testing grow knoppix with Kanotix-Easter-RC4, I have four comments:
1. Default mount points in user dialog are "/mnt/hdX". Better change that to "/media/hdX", which is standard now for Knoppix and Kanotix.
2. Generating the new iso file is convenient and fast (didn't try the burning, though; did it from inside VMware workstation). index.html is loaded on startup of KDE, but as accompanying css file doesn't get copied, it looks ugly. Better do away with it entirely by also not copying index.html to the iso file.
3. The script explains how to edit default cheat codes in menu.lst (not menu.1st [typo]) and how to make the changes permanent by setting up unionrw. This is a cumbersome procedure but o.k. to do if you need unionrw for other purposes as well (such as apt-get install).
If you only want to edit/add cheat codes, you can edit the file menu.lst inside the temporary grow knoppix folder before you create the iso file. This a very useful shortcut because you don't need unionrw at all, and you can create the iso file in just one step without having to reboot.
4. I am not sure whether modifying menu.lst via unionrw is going to work in the first place. It appears that menu.lst is read by grub at a time when unionfs isn't even mounted yet.