Building a LiveCD

[Gary Thomas]

Folks,

I follow this list and have read the README and Wiki, but
I still have questions.  To start, is there any documentation
other than the sources (the README and Wiki are pretty sparse).
Most of my questions are detailed and not x86 mainline :-)

For example, I'd like to use my own local repositories (I
work with custom systems that aren't 100% in the public trees).
How do I modify the kickstart file to handle this?

Also, I'm interested in building a LiveCD for PowerPC (that's
my target base).  I assume that I need to do this from a PPC
host?  Is there any other magic required?

n.b. I'll be using the version from rawhide, as the FC7
release version is ExcludeArch ppc :-(

Thanks

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Thomas                 |  Consulting for the
MLB Associates              |    Embedded world
------------------------------------------------------------

[Jeremy Katz]

On Wed, 2007-09-05 at 14:56 -0600, Gary Thomas wrote:
>  I follow this list and have read the README and Wiki, but
>  I still have questions.  To start, is there any documentation
>  other than the sources (the README and Wiki are pretty sparse).
>  Most of my questions are detailed and not x86 mainline :-) 
The README is really the extent of the current docs...  patches
cheerfully accepted :-)  And there should be kickstart syntax docs
floating around, although I don't remember where off-hand...  I'll try
to remember to ask clumens tomorrow 

>  For example, I'd like to use my own local repositories (I
>  work with custom systems that aren't 100% in the public trees).
>  How do I modify the kickstart file to handle this? 
Repositories to use are defined by the 'repo' lines.  You can use
something like
  repo --name=foo --baseurl=http://some.web.site.com/path/to/my/repo
  repo --name=bar --baseurl=file:///path/to/a/local/one
  repo --name=baz --mirrorlist=http://some.site.com/path/to/mirrorlist

Baseurl and mirrorlist are used exactly as they are with yum.

>  Also, I'm interested in building a LiveCD for PowerPC
> (that's
>  my target base).  I assume that I need to do this from a PPC
>  host?  Is there any other magic required? 
Correct.  Also, the ppc support may have bugs and only boot on a small
subset of ppc platforms.  It's had very little in the way of testing.  I
pushed a few little fixes for it today.

One little bit of "magic" which is helpful is that if you're building on
a ppc64 box for a ppc32 target, you'll want to run livecd-creator under
setarch.  This is also applicable for building an i386 live CD on an
x86_64 box.

Jeremy

[Gary Thomas]

Jeremy Katz wrote:
>  On Wed, 2007-09-05 at 14:56 -0600, Gary Thomas wrote:
> > I follow this list and have read the README and Wiki, but
> > I still have questions.  To start, is there any documentation
> > other than the sources (the README and Wiki are pretty sparse).
> > Most of my questions are detailed and not x86 mainline :-)
>  
>  The README is really the extent of the current docs...  patches
>  cheerfully accepted :-)  And there should be kickstart syntax docs
>  floating around, although I don't remember where off-hand...  I'll try
>  to remember to ask clumens tomorrow 
>   
Once I learn enough to make such comments/changes, I'll see what
I can do to help improve the docs.

> > For example, I'd like to use my own local repositories (I
> > work with custom systems that aren't 100% in the public trees).
> > How do I modify the kickstart file to handle this?
>  
>  Repositories to use are defined by the 'repo' lines.  You can use
>  something like
>    repo --name=foo --baseurl=http://some.web.site.com/path/to/my/repo
>    repo --name=bar --baseurl=file:///path/to/a/local/one
>    repo --name=baz --mirrorlist=http://some.site.com/path/to/mirrorlist
>  
>  Baseurl and mirrorlist are used exactly as they are with yum. 
This helped and I was able to build an image.  Sadly, it failed
with the oft-reported problem of not finding the CDROM root device
(no CDROM driver in image?)  I need to investigate this some.

BTW - I'm testing this on a Mac Mini and also iBook.  Once I get
it working, I'll move on to my custom hardware.

> > Also, I'm interested in building a LiveCD for PowerPC
> (that's
> > my target base).  I assume that I need to do this from a PPC
> > host?  Is there any other magic required?
>  
>  Correct.  Also, the ppc support may have bugs and only boot on a small
>  subset of ppc platforms.  It's had very little in the way of testing.  I
>  pushed a few little fixes for it today. 
Thanks for the info.  Forgive an outsider's question, but how can I
access these changes (read only GIT pull would be fine)?

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Thomas                 |  Consulting for the
MLB Associates              |    Embedded world
------------------------------------------------------------

[Jeremy Katz]

On Thu, 2007-09-06 at 05:24 -0600, Gary Thomas wrote:
>  Jeremy Katz wrote:
>  > On Wed, 2007-09-05 at 14:56 -0600, Gary Thomas wrote:
>  >> For example, I'd like to use my own local repositories (I
>  >> work with custom systems that aren't 100% in the public trees).
>  >> How do I modify the kickstart file to handle this?
>  > 
>  > Repositories to use are defined by the 'repo' lines.  You can use
>  > something like
>  >   repo --name=foo --baseurl=http://some.web.site.com/path/to/my/repo
>  >   repo --name=bar --baseurl=file:///path/to/a/local/one
>  >   repo --name=baz --mirrorlist=http://some.site.com/path/to/mirrorlist
>  > 
>  > Baseurl and mirrorlist are used exactly as they are with yum.
>  
>  This helped and I was able to build an image.  Sadly, it failed
>  with the oft-reported problem of not finding the CDROM root device
>  (no CDROM driver in image?)  I need to investigate this some. 
Some macs are apparently still using old IDE; I added ide-cd to the list
of modules being pulled in earlier to account for this

>  >> Also, I'm interested in building a LiveCD for PowerPC
> (that's
>  >> my target base).  I assume that I need to do this from a PPC
>  >> host?  Is there any other magic required?
>  > 
>  > Correct.  Also, the ppc support may have bugs and only boot on a small
>  > subset of ppc platforms.  It's had very little in the way of testing.  I
>  > pushed a few little fixes for it today.
>  
>  Thanks for the info.  Forgive an outsider's question, but how can I
>  access these changes (read only GIT pull would be fine)? 
You can get an anonymous clone of current git via
  git clone git://git.fedoraproject.org/hosted/livecd 

Jeremy

[Gary Thomas]

Jeremy Katz wrote:
>  On Thu, 2007-09-06 at 05:24 -0600, Gary Thomas wrote:
> > Jeremy Katz wrote:
> >> On Wed, 2007-09-05 at 14:56 -0600, Gary Thomas wrote:
> >>> For example, I'd like to use my own local repositories (I
> >>> work with custom systems that aren't 100% in the public trees).
> >>> How do I modify the kickstart file to handle this?
> >> Repositories to use are defined by the 'repo' lines.  You can use
> >> something like
> >>   repo --name=foo --baseurl=http://some.web.site.com/path/to/my/repo
> >>   repo --name=bar --baseurl=file:///path/to/a/local/one
> >>   repo --name=baz --mirrorlist=http://some.site.com/path/to/mirrorlist
> >>
> >> Baseurl and mirrorlist are used exactly as they are with yum.
> > This helped and I was able to build an image.  Sadly, it failed
> > with the oft-reported problem of not finding the CDROM root device
> > (no CDROM driver in image?)  I need to investigate this some.
>  
>  Some macs are apparently still using old IDE; I added ide-cd to the list
>  of modules being pulled in earlier to account for this
>  
> >>> Also, I'm interested in building a LiveCD for PowerPC (that's
> >>> my target base).  I assume that I need to do this from a PPC
> >>> host?  Is there any other magic required?
> >> Correct.  Also, the ppc support may have bugs and only boot on a small
> >> subset of ppc platforms.  It's had very little in the way of testing.  I
> >> pushed a few little fixes for it today.
> > Thanks for the info.  Forgive an outsider's question, but how can I
> > access these changes (read only GIT pull would be fine)?
>  
>  You can get an anonymous clone of current git via
>    git clone git://git.fedoraproject.org/hosted/livecd  
Perfect - I updated to the GIT version and now it boots on
my two test systems.  Now, on to the interesting work of
getting it to go on my non-standard platforms :-)

Thanks

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Thomas                 |  Consulting for the
MLB Associates              |    Embedded world
------------------------------------------------------------