Building a Live Fedora CD

Kadischi was created in 2005 as an alternative to Pilgrim, specifically for creating Fedora based live CDs.

Although it's still in early development stages, it's a very active process and we should expect a package to be available any time soon. Unfortunately, to build and install Kadischi, you'll need to download it from CVS, but don't worry, the installation steps are covered below and overall, it's a quite usable program.

Basically, Kadischi uses Anaconda to install the system in a temporary directory. It then executes the collection of scripts in order to modify the system to successfully run in a read-only environment (a CD for instance). After all modifications are complete, Kadischi creates an intrig image, then compresses the system tree and finally outputs a live ISO9660 CD image.

Setup

- Before starting, I'm assuming you have Fedora Core 6 already installed, together with a graphical interface, about 4GB free disk space and all the requirements installed. If not, to install the required dependencies, type the following command:

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# yum install fedora busybox-anaconda syslinux mkisofs squashfs-tools zisofs-tools e2fsprogs createrepo yum-utils gnome-python2-extras cvs

- Check whether you have enough space available:

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# df -h /

in my case, the command outputed:

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filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3 44G 14G 28G 33% /

so, there are 28Gb of free disk space available under directory "/".

- Now create and populate your repository from the FC6 ISO images. I've used the DVD installation media so I wouldn't have to continuously switch through the many CDs:

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# mkdir /livecd
# cp -av /media/FC6/Fedora/ /livecd
# cp -av /media/FC6/repodata/ /livecd

where /media/FC6 is the FC6 mounted DVD path.

- Download Kadischi from CVS:

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# cd /livecd
# export CVSROOT=:pserver:[email protected]:/cvs/devel
# cvs -z3 login
(press enter when prompted for password)
# cvs -z3 co kadischi

- Compile and install Kadischi:

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# cd /livecd/kadischi
# ./autogen.sh
# make
# make install

- Open the file /etc/kadischi/kadischi.conf using your favorite editor (vi, nano, mcedit etc) and choose which bootloader will be used by your LiveCD. The valid options are "GRUB" or "isolinux".

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# vi /etc/kadischi/kadischi.conf

BOOTLOADER=isolinux

Build the Live CD

The build process is similar to the installation process while building a system from a CD. Anaconda is detecting the hardware and the same dialogs are displayed which allow you to make selections like packages and localization. Unfortunately, this process doesn't seem to work under VMWare environment.

- Start the process of configure the Live CD:

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# kadischi /livecd /livecd/LiveCD-FC6-Custom.iso

- You'll now have to follow the prompts to make localization, hostname and package selection. When the process is complete, the installer will ask you to reboot, but it will actually send the process into the next step.

- Next, you will be asked about firewall, services and user configuration. It might take, however, a few minutes before reaching this state as the ISO image will be created at this point.

- Finally, you will be prompted whether or not the new ISO is to be burned. It's your choice whether or not to do it now as the ISO image will reside in the /livecd/ directory, ready to be burned at any time. After burning it, the CD is now ready to be booted from.

Building a Live Fedora CD

A tutorial about how to build a Fedora Live CD with Kadischi.