Create your own SL6 LiveCD

IMPORTANT: This description is valid for SL6 only. For SL4 and SL5 LiveCD please see Create your own SL4, SL5 LiveCD

Creating a LiveCD image with livecd-tools

Use the livecd-tools from SL 6.4 to create your own LiveCD. To install livecd-tools run as root

yum --enablerepo=sl-addons install liveusb-creator

or update to the latest version with

yum update livecd-tools

The LiveCD creation is based on kickstart configuration files. You can find the files which were used to create SL6 LiveCDs under /usr/share/livecd-tools or you can download the latest files with svn. The following command will download the kickstart configuration from trunk into a folder called livecd-config

svn co https://svn.iac.ethz.ch/pub/livecd/trunk/SL6/livecd-config

The following main kickstart files are available

sl64-livecd-gnome.ks         kickstart file used for 32-bit SL64 LiveCD with gnome desktop
sl64-livecd64-gnome.ks       kickstart file used for 64-bit SL64 LiveCD with gnome desktop
sl64-livedvd.ks              kickstart file used for 32-bit SL64 LiveDVD
sl64-livedvd64.ks            kickstart file used for 64-bit SL64 LiveDVD
sl64-mini_livecd-icewm.ks    kickstart file used for 32-bit SL64 LiveMiniCD with icewm desktop
sl64-mini_livecd64-icewm.ks  kickstart file used for 64-bit SL64 LiveMiniCD with icewm desktop
sl64-livecd-gnome-NONPAE.ks  kickstart file used for 32-bit SL64 LiveCD with gnome desktop running on non-pae capable hardware

The above kickstart files can include the following files

sl64-live-base.ks           The base for all kickstart files
sl64-extra-software.ks      Install extra software which is not part of standard SL6
sl64-config-icewm.ks        Customize icewm
sl64-doc.ks                 Creates a short documentation in /usr/share/HTML/index.html
sl64-live-NONPAE.ks         Include to build LiveCD running on non-pae capable hardware

Modify the kickstart files to fit your needs. For more information about kickstart configuration files see for example http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Kickstart.

To rebuild the SL64 LiveCD, SL64 LiveDVD, and SL64 LiveMiniCD run as root

LANG=C livecd-creator --config=/usr/share/livecd-tools/sl64-livecd-gnome.ks   --fslabel=SL64-LiveCD-i386
LANG=C livecd-creator --config=/usr/share/livecd-tools/sl64-livecd64-gnome.ks --fslabel=SL64-LiveCD-x86_64

LANG=C livecd-creator --config=/usr/share/livecd-tools/sl64-livedvd.ks   --fslabel=SL64-LiveDVD-i386
LANG=C livecd-creator --config=/usr/share/livecd-tools/sl64-livedvd64.ks --fslabel=SL64-LiveDVD-x86_64

LANG=C livecd-creator --config=/usr/share/livecd-tools/sl64-mini_livecd-icewm.ks   --fslabel=SL64-LiveMiniCD-i386
LANG=C livecd-creator --config=/usr/share/livecd-tools/sl64-mini_livecd64-icewm.ks --fslabel=SL64-LiveMiniCD-x86_64

Or just use your own kickstart file

LANG=C livecd-creator --config=sl6-myconfig.ks --fslabel=My-LiveCD

livecd-creator as some more options. See livecd-creator help:

livecd-creator -h

For more information see also

How to create a Fedora LiveCD: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_a_Live_CD
Creating a CentOS LiveCD image: https://projects.centos.org/trac/livecd/wiki/CreateImage
Build a Fedora Live CD (IBM Doc): http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-fedora-livecd/index.html

Test the ISO image

You can burn your ISO image to a CD or DVD ROM to test it. However, it is much easier to test it with qemu or vmplayer

Get qemu from rpmforge (http://rpmrepo.org/).

How to run qemu (see man qemu):

qemu -m 1024 -cdrom SL6-LiveCD.iso
qemu -m 1024 -full-screen -cdrom SL6-LiveCD.iso

Escape full screen in qemu with ALT+CTRL+f

Or alternatively you can use VMware Player.

Last modified: Saturday, 20-Apr-2013 22:31:56 CEST by Urs Beyerle