Re: Create a custom debian Live ISO

[Linux-Fan <Ma_Sys.ma@web.de>]

Trevis Schiffer writes:

> Hi,
>
> I am trying to build a custom ISO from this guide:  
> https://willhaley.com/blog/custom-debian-live-environment/
>
> But the ISO fails to boot, with a message that it can't find the init system.
>
> Then trying to understand: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianCustomCD but the  
> whole page is bit overkill for what I want to do.
>
> Do you know any simple, minimalist, up-to-date guide to create a custom  
> minimal live ISO?

I do not know of any guide (btw. thanks for sharing the link, I think it  
will also be useful for me in the future...).

Might be too trivial a question, but: If the message is about a missing init  
system, have you cheked some options around that? If I understand the guide  
correctly, it recommends using

	apt-get update && \
	apt-get install --no-install-recommends \
	    linux-image-686 \
	    live-boot \
	    systemd-sysv

You might try using regular sysvinit? In my scripts I use
package `live-config-systemd` (which is not sysvinit but still another  
package as recommended in the guide). As a debugging measure it might also  
be interesting to omit the `--no-install-recommends` because the missing  
package might be reommended by another and it would be easy if the fix is  
just installing some more packages (one can find out which exactly are  
needed later).

Also, it is fine if you want to know all the details and create the live-iso  
with the guide, but other more automated approaches exist, e.g. I used  
`remastersys` (now seems to be continued as Linux Respin?  
http://www.linuxrespin.org/) in the past which most often produced good  
results (except images were sometimes too large but that was my fault of  
wanting to include too much software).

In case you try a remastersys-like approach and it fails for some reason, I  
have some modified version of (the original) remastersys which continues to  
work to today with systemd and new kernels, although I have not tried it with  
Debian Sid yet and my automation still fails to setup the desired keyboard  
layout and timezone for the resulting live system :)

> I want some network audit tools, emacs-nox, zfs-fuse  etc with a sid ISO.

Definitely doable. If you want to run it on a live CD/DVD you need to follow  
your guide or remastersys or such. If it later runs on an USB pendrive, you  
could also consider just "installing" Debian to the drive and see how far  
you can get with making the essential parts read-only afterwards? This would  
enable you to upgrade the system later (which is good for everyhting network- 
connected?)

Just a collection of thoughts, nothing precise at the moment :(

HTH
Linux-Fan

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