Hi. I don't know which forum to post this in, but, .....

I would like to create a simple Live CD package for use in experimentation. I do a lot of research that requires a *lot* of computer time. It would be useful if I could use a lot of the (Windows XP) machines in teaching laboratories overnight. These machines do boot up OK with Knoppix disks.

However, a problem is that my research needs large data files, and it's a pain to put these on the hard drives of the machines ahead of time. What I would like to do is create a live cd with my data already on it, so that it can be read from there. I don't need much of the software on the Knoppix CD. I don't even need X running. I do need USB as when experiments have finished, I come around with a USB data key, and copy the results onto it.

How could I do this? Could I make a stripped down version of Knoppix by copying the CD to a harddrive, removing OOffice, GIMP, etc., to make space, putting my data and other programs on it, and then burning another CD? Is there an easier way to do this? A smaller live CD I could use (I need Java, which is present on Knoppx).

Any suggestions?

Cheers,

Ross-c

I've never done this, but, this looks like a decent guide.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7233

good luck.

i have done something similar, but using compactflash instead of a cd. its really not that hard after you have done it once. I would start with a gentoo stage1 tarball to give you a basic directory structure, C compiler, and some other basic stuff. then, use busybox for all your binaries. Then you have to compile a kernel with all the modules you think you might need depending on what computers you will need to use it on. Look into isolinux/syslinux for the bootloader. My system is 16MB compressed without any of my proprietary programs installed

There are a lot of good live cd's out there, but they always have issues with limited space. I'd like someone to make a live dvd. Of course, i suppose you might run out of memory pretty quickly with a dvd.

Anyways, one of the distro's I use ( either slackware or debian, can't remember, but i think it's debian) comes with tools to create a live cd. Something to look into.

Hi. I managed to work things out, sufficient for what I was trying to do.

I downloaded a version of DamnSmallLinux, which is already a cut down version of Knoppix.

I then mounted the iso image as per the following command:

mount -o loop -t iso9660 -r dsl0.8.2.iso /mnt/iso

I then copied over the contents to a writeable directory.

cp -r /mnt/iso .

I then added a new directory with all my data and programs.

cp ~ross/EXPERIMENTS iso/EXPERIMENTS

I then found that I had to download a floppy boot image from the same source as I obtained DamnSmallLinux. This may not be necessary, but I couldn't find the boot image in the cdrom image I'd downloaded. The version of DSL linux I downloaded was 0.8.2, and there was no 0.8.2 floppy image. But, the 0.8.0 image worked fine.

cp boot-0.8.0.img iso/boot/isolinux/boot.img

I then created a new cd image using the following command:

mkisofs -r -b boot/isolinux/boot.img -c boot/isolinux/boot.cat -o bootcd.iso iso

Note the -b option for the boot image and the -c option for the catalogue. The catalogue was already present in the DSL disk image. I then burnt this to cd

cdrecord -dev=0,0,0 bootcd.iso

And hey presto, I had a bootable cd with my programs and data on it. As the true file systems were compressed, my data wasn't in any "normal" place, but I found it in /cdrom/EXPERIMENTS. I don't care where the data is as long as I can find it. I'm going to have to copy a java JRE installation there as well, but I don't think that this should be a problem, as I can configure my experiment bash-scripts to do whatever I want and find java where-ever it is.

So, now I have what I need. There is a script for remastering Knoppix (see http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12578), but my method is simpler (if less flexible).

This will also make it exceptionally easy to distribute my data and programs should anyone ask for them :-)

Cheers,

Ross-c

BTW: I have a DVD burner on my computer, but burning a DVD of Damn Small Linux might be tending towards overkill :-)

Cheers,

Ross-c

for the project I was working on when I created this system, I first tried every version of Knoppix and DSL that I could find. They did some weird stuff that didnt make a lot of sense to me, so I made my own. I reccommend doing this to anyone, its not that hard and once you have played with it enough to do it once it becomes very easy to make things like this. Plus, you get exactly what you want and you understand how it works.

PS: I meant to quote Motown's reply when following up the comment about a live DVD, but quoted Rocker's response by mistake.