PCLinuxOS New User Guide: Remaster the PCLinuxOS LiveCD

Remaster the PCLinuxOS LiveCD

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It really is fairly simple even if it sounds like its not. There are several reasons you might want to do this such as setting up a complete gaming system on a disk, cd, or dvd, to take anywhere with you, just search the forums for LiveDVD to see what Darin, one of the community members, has done with that idea.

Even if gaming isn't your cup of tea you might just want to set up the system just as you like it. Themes and applications added to or subtracted from the basic PCLinuxOS system just the way you want it. Try doing that with that other operating system.

If you just want to remaster your system as a backup it is as simple as entering:

mklivecd new.iso

or:

remasterme

from your terminal as root. Only PCLinuxOS Preview 0.93a Big Daddy comes with remasterme by default. If you have done a complete update on a .93 install since it was released, then you probably have remasterme installed.

Advanced LiveCD Building

There is more to building a live CD though. For information about more advanced features:

mklivecd --help

The basic command for remastering a livecd with the bootsplash working:

mklivecd new.iso --bootopt splash=silent --bootimg boot.lss

The --bootopt switch means you can add basically anything you wish, --bootopt xbpp=24 means you can have it booting with 24xbpp instead of the default 16 without actually entering the livecd xbpp=24 cheatcode. Basically it overwrites your default values with default values of your own choice.

The --bootimg boot.lss is the splash screen you see at the very first with the options when you boot the livecd, I have tweaked my personal systems for auto booting quicker than the default 100 seconds to 35, this is done in the mklivecd script itself.

I've made a PCLinuxOS remaster, now how can I install this to a harddisk?
The PCLinuxOS installer is this program: (/union)/usr/sbin/livecd-install
or in PCLinuxOS Preview 0.93a it is: (/union)/usr/sbin/draklive-install

The Complete Step-By-Step Guide

The complete step-by-step guide to creating a remaster.

1. log into root user
2. create the folder /root/temp/livecd
3. create the folder /root/livecd_iso
4. Open a console and type (or copy and paste)

mklivecd --nodir ^/root/temp,^/root/tmp,^/mnt,^/tmp,^/root/temp/livecd,^/root/livecd_iso --root / --workdir /root/temp/livecd --nofile ^/etc/X11/xorg.conf,^/etc/X11/XF86Config,^/etc/modprobe.conf,^/etc/modprobe.preload,^/etc/fstab --bootopt splash=silent --bootimg boot.lss /root/livecd_iso/nonspecific.iso

You can optionally keep your old configuration (if you just made a backup) like /etc/X11/xorg.conf into the new system. by typing :

mklivecd --nodir ^/root/temp,^/root/tmp,^/mnt,^/tmp,^/root/temp/livecd,^/root/livecd_iso --root / --workdir /root/temp/livecd  --bootopt splash=silent --bootimg boot.lss /root/livecd_iso/nonspecific.iso

5. burn the iso and boot in to it.

If you want to install your live CD from the remaster? To install to a partition, launch from a super user konsole, the command : /usr/sbin/livecd-install (371KB file)

Reboot.

Bootsplash Art

As a starting point, you may use Inkscape or whatever you want. you need imagemagik installed. Create an image that is 640 pixels wide by somewhere between 200 and 300 pixels high, with 16 colours (640x320 is kinda ok). You can convert to 16 colors in GIMP with the Image->Mode->Indexed... menu item. Unselect "dithering" while converting, for a better result. Don't do complicated graphics with tons of gradient and bevels, these would look crappy.

Save the image as "splash.png" and run the following command in a console:

convert splash.png splash.bmp

Next convert the BMP to RLE format:

bmptoppm < splash.bmp | ppmtolss16 > splash.rle

Rename the output to splash.lss

mv ./splash.rle ./splash.lss

Creating an ISO with your Bootsplash

Now the iso part, you have to add the param: "--bootimg splash.lss" to mklivecd command line argument.

Example code:

mklivecd --nodir ^/root/temp,^/root/tmp,^/mnt,^/tmp,^/root/temp/livecd,^/root/livecd_iso --root / --workdir /root/temp/livecd --nofile ^/etc/X11/xorg.conf,^/etc/X11/XF86Config,^/etc/modprobe.conf,^/etc/modeprobe.preload,^/etc/fstab --bootmsg=/root/advanced.msg --bootimg=/root/splash.lss --bootopt --splash=yes --bootkey F2=/root/message.lss /root/livecd_iso/livecd0523.iso

Bootsplash message

Create a text file named: "f2 message.lss". Type in your messages and copy it to /root.
To create the ISO with this information, you'll have to add the param : "--bootkey F2=/root/message.lss" to the mklivecd command line argument.

Example code:

mklivecd --nodir ^/root/temp,^/root/tmp,^/mnt,^/tmp,^/root/temp/livecd,^/root/livecd_iso --root / --workdir /root/temp/livecd --nofile ^/etc/X11/xorg.conf,^/etc/X11/XF86Config,^/etc/modprobe.conf,^/etc/modeprobe.preload,^/etc/fstab --bootmsg=/root/advanced.msg --bootimg=/root/splash.lss --bootopt --splash=yes --bootkey F2=/root/message.lss /root/livecd_iso/livecd0523.iso

For more information...

Read about How To make your remasters create user accounts with your preferences for KDE and most applications

For all the other options you need to visit this page http://livecd.berlios.de/∞.
Also there is no difference in making livecd's or livedvd's, there is a limit of 2gb compressed loop file (livecd.sqfs) size at the moment.

Read more about creating a personalized LiveCD on Creating Live CD Linux with PCLinuxOS∞

CategoryAdvanced

PCLinuxOS New User Guide : RemasterLiveCD

Remaster the PCLinuxOS LiveCD

Advanced LiveCD Building

The Complete Step-By-Step Guide

Bootsplash Art

For more information...