Create your own Mandrake LiveCD with mklivecd!
 

This little demon was surfin' the web for Mandrake related goodies and happened to discover:

-----> mklivecd <-----

Project Page, CVS Download Page, Screenshots, Mailing Lists (https) , Mailing Lists (http), (and the original page I found which has detailed info on cvs (but is it up to date? may or may not be more up to date than the cvs download page linked to above, I didn't check)

So.... this looks very interesting.. I haven't downloaded any of the files or tried this mklivecd program yet.. but it does look like something that would be fun to whip up my own livecd custom distros for friends and family to introduce them to Linux. I tried doing a "urpmi mklivecd" and sure enough it tried to download an old version of mklivecd, so I'm going to try the cvs version instead since there's rpms for it available. I hope this works with Mandrake 10 Official and kernel 2.6!

What say you, fellow Mandrake users? :) Anyone interested in this? Anyone use this to make their own LiveCD?

Let us know! :)

Edit: Oh, and here's a quote from their about page:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"i n t r o
The LiveCD project is dedicated to providing you with tools to create your own LiveCD from a currently installed Linux distribution. It can be used to create your own distribution, specialised CD or to put together a demo disk to show off the power of our favourite OS.

f e a t u r e s
The project features automatic hardware detection and setup and utilises compression technology to build a LiveCD from a partition much larger to typically fit on a CD. (Up to 2GB for a normal 650MB CD.) When booting from this LiveCD, the data is transparently decompressed as needed.

Currently only Mandrake Linux 9.2+ is supported as a host for creation of the LiveCD, i.e. we are only able to create LivceCD's from a MDK install."
---------------------------------------------------------------
So it sounds like the program/scripts/whatever they use uses the compression scheme similar to Knoppix's liveCD? If so, that sounds AWESOME! I could really put together a cool Mandrake liveCD!

Edit #2: Looks like the author of this mklivecd program has another page for a LiveCD he made (using the program mklivecd I assume): MiniCD. In his forums on the MiniCD site he posts an answer to the question:

===> "I was wondering what kind of compression are you getting when mastering the CDs?"

===>"See for yourself:

[jaco@localhost minicd]$ ls -al mdkimg.*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 188300602 Mar 16 13:31 mdkimg.clp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 435879936 Mar 16 13:24 mdkimg.iso

That is with a "gzip -9" type compression. (Basically the same as used in Knoppix.) What I am also working on (yes, I have way, way, way too many side-projects) is a bzip2-type compression modules. Instead of cloop I guess the kernel module will be called bzloop. I would love to see what that does and what the performance (decompression) penalty would be - if any.

Greetings,
Jaco"
----------------------------------------
Hmmm... Well now.... sounds fun. :) Of course that quote is dated March of 2003 but the latest cvs rpm's are dated Nov 2003 or so and the cvs src page has files which are as recent as a few weeks ago... so the above quote is probably way out of date.. Just wanted to post this info for discussion. :)

Edit #3:Haven't tried cvs yet for this but from this post on the mailing list it appears there's a newer version of mklivecd as recent as June, maybe newer.

Disclaimer: I am not the author of mklivecd or minicd or any of the pages linked to above. Quotes are listed here as they appear at the source(s) : therefore all spelling errors in each belong to the author(s) of said quotes.

So has anyone tried making their own LiveCD with this yet?

Was this thread of interest to anyone? :-)

I actually plan to try in the near future. This should help with a project I am working on for a museum. They have asked me to design a simple kiosk machine.

I thought it would be great to have this load from a cd, not the hard drive.

If anyone else has tried. Please post some issues that you may have ran into...


Thanks

I think it'd be cool to have a live cd with firefox and thunderbird.
Alvin

This looks like an excellent idea - thanks for pointing it out to us. I am going to make this a "sticky thread" - I think it is that useful. For the moment, I will leave it in Mandrake as only Mandrake works with it - if it gets extended to other distros, let me know and I'll move it into the main Distro forum.

You're welcome. :)

Quote:

I am going to make this a "sticky thread" - I think it is that useful.

Great, thanks XavierP! :)

What about Mandrake 10? Can it be a host for making liveCds?

It is sure interesting to make a Mandrake (my own) LiveCD distro.
I have thought about it to make my own LiveCD distro based on Knoppix (which is a great product).
But to have it based on Mandrake would be even better.

I liked the urpmi feature very much, so this would be a great thing.

You might even want to create a livecd off the cooker lists... it changes much... but.... who knows... try the newest cooker version 9.99.x ;-)

I haven't tried it but I've read about other people doing it in the mailing list, which you can read on-line. Perhaps those interested in using this with Mandrake 10 should participate on their mailing list (and maybe let them know that they can discuss it here as well?) :) :) :)

Mandrake 10
 

"SAM" (see www.distrowatch.org) is a MiniCD Mandrake 10 "LiveCD".

It fits on a 200 (186 meg in actual size for SAM) meg MiniCD.

I've also put it onto a 512meg USB KEY and have had no problems booting it from there.

The latter has the added advantage of hosting a RW filesystem.

Nice, Mandrake Linux (with KDE!) on a keyring bootable on almost all USB 2.0 computers and most USB 1.1 machines.

I am trying to make live cd based on slackware 10. Just server programs, nothing else. But it didn't work.

Re: Mandrake 10
 

It really is a nice mini distro, it is fast and has XFCE as the default desktop.

MandrakeClub members can download the Mandrakelinux-Move ISO which is used to create a "live" CD.

However, I did that yesterday, and failed to be impressed by the very slo-o-w
loading, KDE-equipped result.

Maybe I just don't understand well enough how to use such a live CD.

I thought maybe I could load it on a friend's laptop to show him how Mandrake Linux would work on his machine, but after trying it myself I think I'd be embarrassed to.

Yeah, unfortunately that is the problem with LiveCD distros, that they are quit dependant upon the speed of the drive for performance.

Some of the Mini distros load the greater part of the entire distro into RAM, and these run pretty fast as a result, abeit you have far less RAM available for applications.

LiveCD's are great to use in a pinch, but IMHO are not viable for prolonged use.

This looks like a great idea - I might be tempted to give it a try..

Jonr - I also had a look at Mandrake Move, and was rather unimpressed with performance.. it took ages to boot. Nowhere near as good as, say, Knoppix.. I was rather disappointed, given that I've had a generally positive experience of Mandy 10...

Knoppix allows you to put the distro onto a hard drive .. does this do that ? Make a nice backup utility for complete systems

Mdk LiveCD Tutorial since 9.2
 

Hi,

You could see some info from RainbowLinux at www.rainbowlinux.org.
Christine started to play around with it and posted at MandrakeUsers.org her tutorial on how to do it with 9.2, 10.0 and 10.1.

Take a look there.

1,

:cool: Lopo

Just to add to this thread, here's something else I found:

Linux-Live: http://www.linux-live.org/ (Project Page)

"Linux Live is a set of bash scripts which allows you to create own LiveCD from every Linux distribution. Just install your favourite distro, remove all unnecessary files (for example man pages and all other files which are not important for you) and then download and run these scripts."

I been messing around ALOT with live CD's lately, started as a work project and became an obsession.

Currently i have made a DVD that has 2 dos boots (ghost and Partition magic), a totally decked out Windows PE boot image and 6 different distros of linux on it. Its fun to see what you can do when you put your mind to it.

How are you doing this on a DVD? I didn't think they could boot.
Alvin

DVD's can boot. There are even several linux installs that come in dvd format, mandrake and Fedora core are two examples of Linux distros that have dvd versions of the install. Its the same as booting from a normal CD if you know how to set up a multi boot CD the same applies to a multiboot DVD.

as far as a single boot DVD, any decent burning software can make a bootable dvd.

If you want to learn about multiboot DVD/cd the best place i know of is The 911 CD forums. While mainly dealing with Windoz preinstall envionment, the multi OS boot loaders are designed to boot Linux kenels, They use linux boot loaders to do it. So in short the information is universal accross all cds and platforms.

Just wondering, how much can you put on a live CD? JAVA and Flash aren't to big Hummmmm the possibilities.
Alvin

The mklive scripts have been available via URPMI for some time now.

My windowsXP live cd image is about 500 megs. It has IE firefox, .net framework, ghost, winzip, Windows media player, Messenger II, Java , flash, a half dozen networking and PC diagnotic utilities, McAfee virus scan, Hijack this, Adware DirectX sound network and scsi support for most common boxes. I built it mainly to be able to ghost test servers that have the fast PCI bus.

Since there are no dos based drivers for FastPCI the only way to get Ghost to image those SCSI drives was in a 32 bit shell. and well with the help of many talented folks over at 911 cd and tools like Barts PE i was able to do much more then i ever hoped with it.

Adding Live linux boot disks was the next logical step in the proccess of geekiness. The project just kept getting bigger and bigger but man i had a lot of fun just seeing if i could do it.

I thought about trying this, and I'm wondering why when I try "urpmi mklivecd" it says it can't find any such package? Many of the packages I find are older, so I wonder if it has something to do with the sources I'm using? Anyone have any suggestions of up to date urpmi sources for 10.0?

Easy urpmi
http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/

OK question
Can I copy a Mandrake move cd to a 700 mb partition boot in to it add java and flash then mklive to have what I want? Any tips welcom as to how to chang things to boot install etc.
Alvin

You may want to check out the mklivecd web page.

This is all covered there along with step by step instructions for creating your own custom CD's.

i think this is a great idea and plan on trying it.
in my opinion though, there is nothing like linux on a full HD. my wife wasnt to fond of linux till i erased xp and installed everything mandrake came with. now i got my development toolz and she can have games.

I've used this tool to create Mandrake 10.1- and Debian-based live-CD's for diskless thin clients. These thin clients are used for desktop usage and surveillance cam monitoring. As slow, as a P100Mhz-machine is enough for a fully operational workstation as a thin client! And the speed through XDMCP is amazing!

Linux sure is multifunctional, I already thought these computers were junk and now they're being used for primary workstations. :)

Diskless computers also have big advantages: they need no service and you can safely switch them off directly from the power-button, since there's no hard drive nor filesystems to get damaged.

Bootable DVD
 

TJMAX,


I am interested in doing exactly what it appears you already did - creating one DVD with multiple LINUX/WINDOWs boot options; However, I have run into several problems while attempting this (linux distros unbootable). I was hoping that you could post details on how you did it and which LINUX distros you used. I appreciate any assistance you can give: ie what 'bootloader' you choose bcdw, cd shell, some other and what parameters (if any did you have to pass to LINUX).

Thanks in advance,
raytri3
raytri3 [at] yahoo.com

i think i might give it a try, could be useful as well in case i have a system failure on any of my computers :)

I'm running Mandriva 2006 and I'm going to see if I can make a LiveCD with some very basic applications. I may not even use KDE, fluxbox or IceWM would be fine. I want to make one so that I can use Smb4k to transfer files and some basic administrative tools, no games, no word processors or anything. I use Knoppix currently when working on people's computers to get around Windows permissions or to do things I can't get access to in Windows. Example I built a guy a new computer cause' his old mainboard fried, but his hdd and things were good. Well XP instead of booting in safe mode or something just refused to let even the administrator log on without doing some kind of online registration, which we couldn't do of course because it was a new mainboard and the NIC drivers didn't work. Anyway long story short I used Knoppix to save his files before an XP re-install and I'd like to make one with a custom list of apps that I like to use so I don't have to dig through all of the ones Knoppix has. I like Knoppix, but there is just way too much to it, most of which I don't use, and I like my Mandriva apps. Has anybody here tried making a LiveCD of 2006 yet?

Yes, I recently made one from Mandriva 2006.1-0.3 which is a work in frustration for the most part. :)

Shortly after installing Mandriva before doing any updates, I made a livecd and it boots ok.

Then, I ran smart update and smart upgrade before making another livecd. That one fails to boot with an error about not finding the loop.

So, I looked in each /isolinux/initrd.gz for differences. Nothing really jumped out at me as being way different. For the short term fix, I used the /isolinux folder from the original livecd and it does boot my updated version of Mandriva livecd complete with Openoffice, kde 3.5, qtparted, partimage, rsync, wget, gftp, xine, xmms, digikam, gimp and a few other goodies.

Here's hoping they fix the mklivecd and get a working livecd-utils.

I Have Mandrake 10.1 Already And Would Like To Upgrade To Mandriva10.2 ???? I Downloaded The Iso "mandriva10.2"on My Desktop And A Cd Version I Burnt Using Kd3... But When I Got A Wild Hair Up My A--! To Actualy Finish What I Started.i Really Did'nt Know Where To Start And I Also Got "scared", Because I've Grown Into What I Call "my Cave"... This Is My First Time Ever Being Part Of Mandrake And I Love The Freedom I Have And The Cool People I've Met.i Have Been Doing Some Reasearch And I Would Love For Any Who Has A Easy-er, Way Of Stacking Mandriva10.2 Up Against Mandrake 10.1??? With Out Mandrake 10.1 Crashing Or Having Boot Problems... I've Been Using My Soft Ware Media Manager... Picking Through What I Want But I Know Theres A Better Way Of Using The Whole Iso File On My Desk Top... Please Help!!!

Not for the faint of heart.

My roommate just tried to create a LiveCD, and the tool changed the ownership/permissions of his directories. He was not able to get it straightened out, and so has switched to (k)ubuntu in frustration.

I've just installed this tool using Smart.

If anyone wants a direct link to the HOWTO at mandrivausers, this is it.

My main interest is in using the tool as a means of backing up and restoring my system so that, if I need to reinstall, I don't have to go through the business of configuring the desktop and adding and removing software.

The tool has been recommended for that purpose in another distro but it may have been augmented to achieve that. I have not found out yet whether I can achieve the same thing.

For backup and restore software it is hard to beat the mondo/mindi suite: http://www.mondorescue.org/

I've used it many times, and have restored to bare metal -- a useful way to deal with hard disk upgrades.

Thanks for that.

I had decided on dar and have been using it to backup everything in sight but it's a little complicated.

Yesterday, I found a link to Ghost for Linux.

Looking at the mondorescue website, I can't decide whether I'm mondo or mindi. I suppose it'll all work out in the end. :confused: :study:

Thanks Alot :study:

I have recently put up a web-app that will generate mklivecd scripts. There are others out there, but with this one you can upload your script to a MySQL database for future retrieval.

Check it out -> http://pclos.intraweave.com/mklivecd and let me know if it works for you.

Some may find this thread of some interest.
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=14393.0
Btw PCLinuxOS makes great live discs with the comand "remasterme".