Remastersys Guide - Create Your Own Ubuntu-based Distro

[grndslm]

Supposedly it will automatically be loaded at boot... so that's great news. Can't wait to test it out tomorrow.

Do you guys know of any other such restricted firmware/drivers, particularly in the networking department (I'm certainly familiar with both NVidia & ATI)??

[grndslm]

UPDATED once more... this is easier than I thought.

[JECHO]

Hey Guys

when I follow CapInk's guide on remastersys' website http://www.remastersys.klikit-linux.com/capink.html

everything work except the home user (after install) has no folder in his directory and if I create one, it goes directly on the desktop. Does anyone have a fix for this?

thanks

i have had that same problem using eeebuntu so im sure the fix is the same... go here: http://forum.eeebuntu.org/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=783

and follow the "How to do it yourself" post.

[grndslm]

Soo... anybody else find this useful?

Or are there more general tips like these that you feel most people would benefit from?

[phpadik]

Thank you very much for this very informative guide. Our organization is planning to remaster Ubuntu. We are targetting fellow students.

We are planning to make 2 remasters, one for Computer Science/Electrical Engineering/Electronics and Communications Engineering/Computer Engineering students and another one for the other students.

The difference will be the first remaster will have preinstalled IDEs and compilers. Both of them will have the usual apps needed by students.

[tsedrey]

This is a great guide, thank you.

I have been desperately trying for the last few days to get remastersys to do exactly what I want.

My friends are semi-against linux and they told me that if I could recreate my desktop into a liveCD, they'd try it. So, I installed a fresh copy on a new partition and installed the programs, made some visual tweaks, etc. I've tried both dist and backup options and I am still having trouble with a few things, maybe they aren't possible, maybe they are...I could use some help please. I am also using 8.10, which may be the cause of some of the issues.

-Emerald theme does not work on the liveCD (not that surprising), but it doesn't work after install either.
-I have added conky to sessions, and it works fine for me, but on the liveCD and after the install it doesn't work.
-I disabled the splash screen, but it still comes up for the liveCD and after install

Basically (and I don't know if this is possible), I want to take an exact snapshot of the partition I have, reproduce it on a liveCD so that my friends can play around with it and then install it if they want with their user name/information.

Can this be done?
Thanks,
David

[grndslm]

We are planning to make 2 remasters, one for Computer Science/Electrical Engineering/Electronics and Communications Engineering/Computer Engineering students and another one for the other students.

The difference will be the first remaster will have preinstalled IDEs and compilers. Both of them will have the usual apps needed by students.

I wish I woulda had an EE distro when I was in college, so I wouldn't have had to install XP.

BTW, Geany was a nice, lightweight semi-IDE. I liked it at least.

[grndslm]

This is a great guide, thank you.

I have been desperately trying for the last few days to get remastersys to do exactly what I want.

...

Basically (and I don't know if this is possible), I want to take an exact snapshot of the partition I have, reproduce it on a liveCD so that my friends can play around with it and then install it if they want with their user name/information.

Can this be done?
Thanks,
David

Remastersys is definitely the tool for the job. I've definitely gotten more working with Remastersys than I ever thought I'd be able to do at this point in time. The key is to understand how all other individual apps work, where their configs go, what's in those configs, etc. Copy the right ones to /etc/skel/ and you're all set.

A good way to test the /etc/skel/ folder out is to simply create a new user with the adduser command and then login and you should see your dock, etc. If something doesn't work, the configs aren't setup.

As for the splash screen, I'm assuming you're referring to Usplash, in which case you pretty much must use startupmanager. It should automatically invoke the "update-initramfs -u" command as you close the app. If you really want to get rid of usplash, you could certainly "sudo aptitude purge usplash" as well.

May the Force be with you all!

[grndslm]

Also... don't forget that the LiveCD must use a basic window manager, like metacity. 3D Effects, like Compiz, aren't supported because Ubuntu's casper scripts automatically disable the fglrx & nvidia drivers.

[munishvit]

Hey guys
Using 'create a USB startup disk', I installed my distro ISO image to USB. But when trying to use this live USB on my friends system, I get the following message:

SYSLINUX 3.53 Debian-2007-12-11 EBIOS Copyright (C) 1994-2007 H. Peter Anvin
Could not find kernel image: linux
boot:

Here the detail what I did:
On a fresh installation of Ubuntu 8.04, I ran update-manager, then installed following packages:
Sun java 6 jre (bin gets automatically installed)
Sun java 6 plugin
CHM Viewer
StarDict
VLC
Amarok
Qalculate
ISO Master
Ex Falso
GStreamer ffmpeg video plugin
GStreamer extra plugins
NTFS configuration tool
Advanced Desktop Effects Settings (ccsm)
Gmount-iso
tcsh
build-essential
flashplugin-nonfree
nrg2iso
remastersys

and then uninstalled the following:
Audio CD Extractor
Calculator
F-Spot Photo Manager
XSane Image Scanner

then,
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo -s
cp -Rf .config/ .fontconfig/ .gconf/ .gconfd/ .gnome2/ .mozilla/ .nautilus/ .openoffice.org2/ /etc/skel/
cp -Rf .config/ .fontconfig/ .gconf/ .gconfd/ .gnome2/ .mozilla/ .nautilus/ .openoffice.org2/ /root/
cd /etc/skel
chown -R root:root .config/ .fontconfig/ .gconf/ .gconfd/ .gnome2/ .mozilla/ .nautilus/ .openoffice.org2/
cd /root
chown -R root:root .config/ .fontconfig/ .gconf/ .gconfd/ .gnome2/ .mozilla/ .nautilus/ .openoffice.org2/

from gui, using 'remastersys backup' tool I picked 'clean' and then 'dist' to get the image. Then finally installed 'usb-creator' and to get live-USB.

but its not working, perhaps because of apt-get autoremove.
Could anyone tell, is there problem in image itself or I need to give some command at boot?
thanks