Re: remastering peculiarities
On Wednesday 07 June 2006 21:05, John Schmidt wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am remastering the KNOPPIX V5 CD to free up some space for some different
> software.
>
> I am following the quantian_howto_build guide (written for a 3.X series of
> KNOPPIX) with some suitable modifications for the latest version of
> KNOPPIX.
>
> Specifically, I have copied the contents of the cd to my hard drive and
> used the cloop module to copy the compressed file system to a "source"
> directory. I then chroot to the "source" directory and make modifications,
> namely, remove some unneeded packages.
>
> I then exit the chroot'ed "source" and make a compressed file system using
> the following writing things to my "release" directory:
>
> mkisofs -R -l -V "KNOPPIX iso9660 filesystem" -hide-rr-moved -v \
> source/ | create_compressed_fs - 65536 > release/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX
>
> I then copy a bunch of files from the original cd to my "release",
> specifically, I do the following:
>
> cp -vax orig-cdrom/[abci]* release/
> cp -vax orig-cdrom/KNOPPIX/[biklLmMR]* release/KNOPPIX/
> cp -vax orig-cdrom/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX-* release/KNOPPIX/
>
> After creating md5sums, I then make the iso using the following:
>
> mkisofs -pad -l -r -J -v -V "KNOPPIX" -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 \
> -boot-info-table -b boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin -c boot/isolinux/boot.cat
> \ -hide-rr-moved -o ../knoppix.iso ../release
>
> I then use qemu to boot this iso via:
>
> qemu -m 512 -cdrom knoppix.iso -boot d
>
> When I started this, I first tested that I could recreate the knoppix.iso
> without doing any package deletion. That worked, so I then went to work
> pruning packages. I did a big prune, and then made my iso going through
> the above steps. When booting with qemu, I got the error:
>
> "Couldn't find KNOPPIX filesystem . . "
>
> I then started the whole process of pruning over again, thinking that I may
> have deleted a crucial package. I then started to prune a few packages at
> a time, creating an iso and testing with qemu. I could create bootable
> modified knoppix.iso that worked.
>
> However, I would occasionally, find that after deleting some packages and
> recreating the iso, I would get the "Couldn't find KNOPPIX filesystem . .
> ." error. When I got this error, I would try and do the above two mkisofs
> commands and test with qemu to see if the KNOPPIX filesystem error was
> non-deterministic.
>
> I then tried to prune a few more packages from my "source" and recreate the
> iso, and I was surprised to find that I created a bootable knoppix iso with
> this new (slightly smaller package set) filesystem.
>
> When I got the "Couldn't find KNOPPIX filesystem . . " error, I never tried
> to actually burn my iso and reboot with my new computer. All testing of
> "bootability" was through qemu.
>
> Why would the KNOPPIX filesystem errors present themself with a certain set
> of packages removed, the large ones, such as openoffice, firefox, scribus,
> thunderbird, etc, and then go away when a few more larger packages were
> removed from the chrooted "source"?
>
> Am I getting some false errors by using qemu instead of actually burning
> them to a cd and rebooting my computer? Using qemu was really a fast and
> convenient way to test the iso. I would hate to have to actually burn the
> iso when I go about remastering KNOPPIX.
>
> Thanks for any insights,
>
> John Schmidt
> jaschmidt@uofu.net
Just to follow-up on what I believe the source of my problem was . . .
When creating a compressed filesystem using create_compressed_fs, I was NOT
using the version provided by KNOPPIX V5 cd, instead, I was using the version
from cloop-utils provided by debian (version 2.02.1+eb.10).
When I switched to the version from KNOPPIX V5 cd, I no longer get the "Can't
find KNOPPIX filesystem . . " error.
Evidently, there is some incompatibilities between the old
create_compressed_fs and the new one that is in KNOPPIX V5 cd.
John
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