Remastersys is back in active development

[lkjoel]

With the size of apps these days it is difficult to keep a live cd under 700MB. I may also need to look at the compression level of mksquashfs. The problem with increasing the compression level is that it can take a long time to decompress on older computers.

Once, with remastersys, as a challenge to myself, I achieved 530MB, but it was quite difficult, and the system was barely usable.

[Fragadelic]

My current OS of choice is a highly customised Ubuntu 11.04 with the following:

lxdm
lxde - desktop
nautilus for file management and desktop icons/background
libreoffice calc,math and writer
bombono
gnomebaker
vlc
firefox
claws mail
gftp
transmission
xchat
synaptic
leafpad
gimp
shotwell

size is 725MB

I would hardly call that an unusable system - lol.

I could get it under 700MB but then I don't have all the apps I want.

A lot can be achieved when you remove the packages that Ubuntu has by default but aren't needed for most things. Lots of the X.org fonts for other languages are huge. localepurge also helps to reduce the size.

I don't bother with dvd's or cd's these days. I just put it on a usb key with startup disk creator.

[Fragadelic]

I also have a very small media center distro I created that is only 300MB with a customised media center app I made using gambas.

Anything is possible if you are willing to take the time to remove everything that isn't needed and you know what you are doing.

[kurt18947]

<snip>

size is 725MB

I would hardly call that an unusable system - lol.

I could get it under 700MB but then I don't have all the apps I want.

A lot can be achieved when you remove the packages that Ubuntu has by default but aren't needed for most things. Lots of the X.org fonts for other languages are huge. localepurge also helps to reduce the size.

I don't bother with dvd's or cd's these days. I just put it on a usb key with startup disk creator.

It's great to see Remastersys is again active. Giving creative individuals a means to distribute their work is is excellent. I don't know how common my problem is but I have a fairly up-to-date system(2 yrs. old) that won't boot from a USB key unless that key has been formatted with Win7. A newly purchased key created with Unetbootin or "Create system disk" won't boot, I just get "boot error". Any computer built in the last 10 years and has an optical drive should boot from a DVD so file size doesn't seem so critical as the ability to use optical media.

[Fragadelic]

The standard iso that remastersys makes can be used by startup disk creator and burned to cd/dvd depending on size.

I'm waiting to hear back from the guy that created the remastersys-gtk gui frontend which is much nicer than my zenity/kdialog bash one. I've asked him if he wants to join me and have his gui included in remastersys as a lot of the new additions will be gui related.

[Fragadelic]

Cool!
I've fixed many problems in the /etc/group file, and added a feature for adding extra users in the install.
You might want to add some extra customization, as you can know when someone used remastersys .

Care to share the issue and fix for /etc/group?

[Fragadelic]

lkjoel - I just checked your latest package and you are doing nothing different than you copied from remastersys for /etc/group. In fact, all the important parts that actually do the work in relinux are copied from remastersys. Are these just more claims to try and make relinux look better?

I'm kind of curious why you place the hidden file
"touch $WORKDIR/.filesystem.squashfs.GENERATED.BY.RELINUX.PROOF"
and check for it. What does it matter who made the filesystem.squashfs? There have been times where folks have manually built it and need to use it.

Anyway, best of luck with relinux.

[hannysabbagh]

hi there.

glade to see remastersys back to live
i used remastersys many times, it worked great with ubuntu 11.10 with gnome-shell 3.2 and unity,the bad thing is that problem with a kernel that don't Contain "aufs",there will be a problem when booting the system and it will not work, same thing with relinux,i only hope that remastersys don't Depend on aufs,so we can add the kernel we want
if you want to test it try to install this kernel:
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.1-oneiric/
and remove the old kernel,then create the iso file using remastersys and you will see the problemwhen booting.

thanks.

[lkjoel]

lkjoel - I just checked your latest package and you are doing nothing different than you copied from remastersys for /etc/group. In fact, all the important parts that actually do the work in relinux are copied from remastersys. Are these just more claims to try and make relinux look better?

I'm kind of curious why you place the hidden file
"touch $WORKDIR/.filesystem.squashfs.GENERATED.BY.RELINUX.PROOF"
and check for it. What does it matter who made the filesystem.squashfs? There have been times where folks have manually built it and need to use it.

Anyway, best of luck with relinux.

No, it's in the latest SVN release. It has an incredible number of changes and improvements (just check the configuration file, you'll see what I mean).
Thanks for the idea, I'll add a "manual" option.

[Fragadelic]

hi there.

glade to see remastersys back to live
i used remastersys many times, it worked great with ubuntu 11.10 with gnome-shell 3.2 and unity,the bad thing is that problem with a kernel that don't Contain "aufs",there will be a problem when booting the system and it will not work, same thing with relinux,i only hope that remastersys don't Depend on aufs,so we can add the kernel we want
if you want to test it try to install this kernel:
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.1-oneiric/
and remove the old kernel,then create the iso file using remastersys and you will see the problemwhen booting.

thanks.

aufs is used for mounting the live filesystem. If they are doing something different with the live I'll need to know about it.