I want to make a custom distro

pplude92 · 07-10-2007, 09:35 PM

Hello. lately a few people have looked at and played around with a highly modified version of Debian I have running on my laptop. Plenty of them have asked me if it would be possible to get a copy of that. Since then, I have named the project, and have replicated it on my development PC.

I was wondering if there was a way I could turn my running system into an installable CD with end-user customization, or, if I could use debootstrap and CHROOT into an environment and package that with the Debian installer. I'm at a complete loss. Now that I know exactly what it consists of, and have a copy of the package list, is there any way I can make my own installer CD?

I have heard about remastering CDs, and that is not the way I want to go. I want it to be my work, and not ripping off someone else's. Can anyone help me? I don't care what installer it uses, I just want to know how to do it, nobody seems to know. Thanks!

UK MAdMaN · 07-11-2007, 10:43 AM

There's something in the Debian repositories you can use to create your own Debian based distro. Can't remember the name of it off the top of my head unfortunately.

pplude92 · 07-11-2007, 10:57 AM

Can anyone help me with this, I'd like to check out what he's talking about.

indienick · 07-11-2007, 01:36 PM

There's something called "live-helper", but that's to help create your own live distribution.

If I may suggest, create a metapackage. Pretty much, your friends just install a very sparse, basic install of Debian, and install your metapackage.

makuyl · 07-11-2007, 01:57 PM

There's also this: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianCustomCD

Telemachos · 07-11-2007, 04:21 PM

And then there's this:

Code:

odysseus@ithaca ~ $ aptitude show dfsbuild
Package: dfsbuild
State: not installed
Version: 0.99.3
Priority: optional
Section: utils
Maintainer: John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>
Uncompressed Size: 2839k
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.6-6), libgmp3c2, ucf (>= 0.28), debconf | debconf-2.0,
         cdebootstrap, mkisofs, cramfsprogs, grub, reprepro
Description: Build Debian From Scratch CD/DVD images
 Debian From Scratch (DFS) is a live bootable CD that is designed to provide a
 fully-featured kernel and a fully-featured rescue environment. The rescue
 environment contains filesystem tools, editors, C development environment, etc.
 
 dfsbuild is the program used to create the DFS CD image.  It is highly
 configurable and can be used to create other custom bootable CD or DVD images.
 You can use dfsbuild to do something as simple as building a DFS CD with a
 custom kernel.  Or, you can customize the CD to include a completely different
 set of packages. 
 
 dfsbuild works by obtaining packages from your nearest Debian mirror. It will
 generate an ISO image that contains a bootable Debian system generated by
 installing those packages.  Also, it can place all the .debs and files needed
 by cdebootstrap in the image.  Thus, the generated image can be used to install
 the base Debian system on a PC as well. 
 
 On i386 and amd64 platforms, dfsbuild supports the Grub bootloader. 
 
 On Alpha, dfsbuild supports the aboot bootloader. 
 
 On PowerPC, dfsbuild supports the yaboot bootloader.

pplude92 · 07-11-2007, 05:39 PM

can I package that with the Debian installer? That's what I need it for