livecd with busybox

[hai wu]

Hello,

It seems when using livecd-creator command, it is using bash for installing
package. There are 'busybox' and 'busybox-anaconda' packages from RHEL
channel, is it possible to use busybox instead? Bash by default does not
include commands like 'which', 'mkdir', etc, while busybox would have
them
built-in ..

Thanks,

[James Heather]

I have a feeling you're going to get into trouble trying this.

Most of those utils are provided by the coreutils package, which is a
prerequisite for a million other essentials. I think you would have to
start by building your own version of the busybox RPM, and adding a line
to the spec file to tell it that it provides coreutils. That will avoid
the dependency problems. It would also have to put symlinks to busybox
in /usr/bin to replace all the missing commands.

Unfortunately, though, it's extremely likely to go wrong. Busybox
packages generally don't provide all the same switches for the core
commands; they often provide only the most important ones. Any package
that relies on (e.g.) "mkdir -Z" will now fail. And my guess is that
there will be hundreds of such failures, and they'll each give you a
massive headache.

Busybox is useful for creating a completely custom-made setup, but not
for replacing the core commands in an already existing setup.

James

On Mon, 2011-05-02 at 23:45 +0100, hai wu wrote:

>  Hello,
>  
>  It seems when using livecd-creator command, it is using bash for
>  installing package. There are 'busybox' and 'busybox-anaconda'
>  packages from RHEL channel, is it possible to use busybox instead?
>  Bash by default does not include commands like 'which', 'mkdir', etc,
>  while busybox would have them built-in .. 
>  
>  Thanks,

 hello,

 although I don't think busybox for desktop livecd is a good idea
 but it can be useful for minimized env / rescue cd ...etc.

 so regarding busybox-anaconda

 does busybox work with RHEL ?


>   Unfortunately, though, it's extremely likely to go wrong. Busybox
>  packages generally don't provide all the same switches for the core
>  commands; they often provide only the most important ones. Any 
>  package
>  that relies on (e.g.) "mkdir -Z" will now fail. And my guess is that
>  there will be hundreds of such failures, and they'll each give you a
>  massive headache.
>