livecd HOWTO

updated @ 2006-02-01

This is a fast introduction to building your own Morphix based livecd using the mmaker toolkit.

The steps

Foreplay

Use a Debian based Linux distro [preferably Debian sid, aka unstable, but every recent one should do]
Get a morphix based .iso [or better: just a base .iso, preferably a stable one at the moment, like 0.5-pre5 or an autobuilded base .iso]
Open a root terminal [su -, you get the point]
mount -t iso9660 -o loop nameoftheisoyoudownloaded.iso /mnt/whatever
cp -a /mnt/whatever/* /path/to/the/extracted/stuff [like /scratch/iso]

Setting up the build environment

Add "deb http://www.morphix.org/debian ./" to your /etc/apt/source.list
apt-get update
apt-get install morphix-mmaker morphix-make-iso

Creating your own mainmod[ule]

See this manual about mmaker for building an .xml file describing your mainmodule, which will basically be your system
If you're done with the .xml file [e.g., mymainmod.xml], type "mmaker mymainmod.xml myprograms.mod" or whatever you like to name them

Building an .iso out of it

Now, remove the files in /scratch/iso/mainmod
Copy/move your myprograms.mod into /scratch/iso/mainmod
make-iso /scratch/iso myfirstlivecd.iso
Done. Burn to cd with your favourite burn program or run with "qemu -cdrom myfirstlivecd.iso" in the qemu emulator, for example

More advanced stuff

If you manually modify some stuff in /tmp/libmorphix-<randomsequence> [e.g., /tmp/libmorphix-9oVKWq] , you have to use the following command to re-compress the mainmod: "module-builder /tmp/libmorphix-9oVKWq aquamorph_20051120a.mod" [or whatever you want to call the mainmodule].

When you want to be able to resize windows ntfs partitions from the livecd, add package ntfsprogs to your .xml and use the program ntfsresize when booted

Example of a mainmod .xml:


<comps>
<groups>
<version>0.5</version>
<id>lightgui</id>

<name>Morphix LightGUI</name>
<repositorylist>
<repository type="debian">ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian</repository>
<repository type="plain">http://www.morphix.org/debian</repository>
</repositorylist>
<description>Morphix LightGUI mainmodule. Includes XFCE4, Firefox,
Abiword and a host of other goodies</description>

<type>mainmod</type>
<suite>sid</suite>
<packagelist>
<packagereq>abiword</packagereq>
<packagereq>xfce4</packagereq>

<packagereq>mozilla-firefox</packagereq>
<!-- ... other goodies here ... -->
</packagelist>
</group>
</comps>