HOWTO create a LiveCD/DVD/USB from a desktop not from a live.iso
 

I have a build DVD that is highly customized vs of CentOS 6.2. Id like to turn that build DVD into a LiveDVD/USB somehow. Is this possible, and if so how?

I have been looking all over google, but my google-foo has failed me today. Everything is either how to create a bootable USB for installing the OS, or taking a Live.iso and making a bootable USB device.

I have been successful at the later, dont care about the bootable install from the USB as that will not meat my goals.

Many thanks in advance for the guidance and help.

I would simply install your creation to a usb just as you would any hard drive. You may not need to create a swap file but since flash drives are cheap, you can. When it all fails just buy a new flash. Or if you want, you can fool with all the tricks to limit disk writes.

In most modern distro's the usb drive is a scsi drive, for maybe 10 years they have also accessed the hard drive with scsi so we commonly call any hard drive some sda or sdb or such.

To be safe, just disconnect your internal hard drive. In some odd installs you may have to watch some stuff but this should be OK.

I would try that, but the big picture here is to create a LiveUSB on partition 1, then a LVM on partition 2 for backups on a server. If the server hardware dies, we can then take the flash drive, plug it into a windows box and turn it instantly into a replacement server that we can make minor adjustments to get up and running instead of our current option.

currently we just do a backup to DVD, USB, NAS, etc... device. if the hardware on the server dies we copy the date off of the backup to a MS Windows box, install our custom software and have our customers up and running in about 4-6hrs.

My goal is to reduce the downtime when hardware fails in the field.

I have been able to create a LiveUSB for Fedora16 (vanilla), but as we have such a highly customized OS we can not run our software in it. Thus my desire to take our kickstart DVD that has our custom OS (modified CentOS 5.4 and 6.2, im working on the 6.2vs atm as we are about to drop support for 5.4) and turn it into a LiveUSB.

have you had a look at ...http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to..._use_a_Live_CD

It seems to cover the subject, if I understand your requirement correctly.

Cheers,
Terry

nice link, im a bit confused about part of those directions. do i need to do that from the OS once i have it running, or will the installer DVD work as it was built with the kickstart option.

I have never done this, but my reading of the destructions suggests that you write a config file to describe your content, then livecd-creator generates the live cd iso. The CD should boot into a login prompt in the live distro.

I suggest that you give it a try and see how you go. Report back on your success.

Cheers,
Terry

now that im at work, ill play with it today. hope i dont have to install it first to build the liveOS from.

ran into a bit of a snag. seems CentOS6.2 does not have either livecd-tools or spin-kickstarts in order to create the liveOS. joy.

At <http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOSLiveCD5.4> they say..."We used the tools from the Fedora livecd-tools project to create the CentOS LiveCD 5.4 image. This toolset offers numerous advantages", so it is possible, but not sure of the best way to it.
One way, which could be a lot of work, is to set up Fedora 16 in Virtualbox, and see if you can do it from there.

Cheers,
Terry

hmm ok thats not a bad idea. i should be able to get Fedora 16 running on my win7 box at home in VMWare to test from there.

https://projects.centos.org/trac/livecd/

this enabled me to get around some of the issues. still working on leaning out the kickstart we use to get a nice liveOS out of it. thanks again for the help.