Creating a New Installation DVD

Woodsman · 01-18-2010, 11:41 PM

I installed the Debian 5.03 KDE CD to a virtual machine. In the past several days I have downloaded and installed a few hundred packages since the initial installation. I have encountered no major hiccups along the way.

For future use and safekeeping, I copied all of the downloaded packages from /var/cache/apt/archives to a different directory.

I want to repeat the installation process several times --- using the original 5.03 KDE CD and all of the subsequently downloaded packages.

One way I could perform this is to 1) use the Debian 5.03 KDE CD to perform the initial installation, 2) copy all of my additional packages to a second CD/DVD image, and 3) install those packages manually. If I understand correctly, something like dpkg -i * should work?

Doable I think, yet I would rather create a single Debian 5.03 KDE Plus DVD for my personal installation use.

All I want is to merge the downloaded packages into the original CD to create my own installation DVD. Nothing fancy or dramatic.

Being new to Debian I don't pretend to understand the Debian Installer process. Yet I can tell from the ISO image that I need to merge my additional packages into the pool directory.

I found the wiki how-to for simple-cdd. I started to run the app but stopped because I was unsure how much bandwidth the app is using. The simple-cdd tool needs internet access, but is simple-cdd downloading all the deb packages again? I don't want any of the installed packages to be re-downloaded when I already have them at hand. I'm not comprehending the how-to very well or the various options.

The idea here is not to waste future bandwidth downloading packages I already have downloaded.

I would appreciate some nudging in the correct direction.

Thanks again.

j1alu · 01-19-2010, 01:56 AM

i have read about simple-cdd, but i don't know it.

there are lots of ways to do it:
1)with live-helper:

Code:

su
apt-get install live-helper
mkdir my_live && cd my_live
lh config --bootstrap copy --debian-installer live
lh build

make sure you got a stock kernel (2.6.26) installed. during the process things are getting downloaded.
before you ask: yes, the result is a) a live-cd and b) installable

2)with remastersys:

Code:

remastersys copy

3)manually:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=47432
and add a simple installer:
http://packages.linuxmint.com/pool/m...ian-installer/
or this one:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=45519

4)about that i don't know, but it might be the best choice:
http://clonezilla.org/

5)perhaps copy it with rsync, should work too (i just copied a complete system with rsync from one partition to the other, edited fstab and grub's menu.lst and voila: ready to go)

Quote:

mount /dev/sda6 /media/backup
rsync -auv --exclude="/home/*" --exclude="/proc/*" --exclude="/lost+found/*" --exclude="/dev/*" --exclude="/mnt/*" --exclude="/media/*" --exclude="/sys/*" --exclude="/tmp/*" / /media/backup

There might be lots of other options, and perhaps much better ones.
(say: fai, fully automatic installation, ???)

for live-helper and remastersys: you stopped the process: it takes a while, just wait.
what exactly is getting downloaded i don't know.

happy headaches

Mrfai · 10-04-2010, 07:07 AM

You should have a look at the FAI project. It includes two tools, that create a partitila mirror for you, containing all packages you like to have on your installation media. Then another script create a bootable installation CD/DVD or USB stick using this mirror and your customized installation configs. FAI is used since over ten years in different project and ist rock solid and stable.

The home page of the FAI project is:

http://fai-project.org