MyLiveCD Guide

[TBercaht]

Hello  ,

I would like to post a guide for properly using MyLiveCD (or is it mylivecd?) specifically targeted to new users of PCLinuxOS.

This guide is based primarily on information from 3 threads found on this forum (cited), as well as my experiences (including mistakes).

Prior to posting this topic, I searched the forum for "mylivecd instruction" and read the "LiveCD, Create your own" page in the Knowledge Base, and did not see what I have in mind.

I recognize the distinct possibility (probability) that I missed a perfectly good "tutorial" post on this subject, therefore I am willing to remove this post (and thread) when I find such a tutorial.

Otherwise, I would like to post the guide I have prepared here, for whoever it will benefit, and am willing to make corrections/clarifications as needed.

Regards,

Darryl

[YouCanToo]

Why don't you add it to the howtos on the pclinuxoshelp wiki.  It would be a good help for anyone using the knowledge base.

[Neal ManBear]

Did you see this thread? ---
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,74418.0.html

[TBercaht]

Hello again  ,

Why don't you add it to the howtos on the pclinuxoshelp wiki.  It would be a good help for anyone using the knowledge base.

@YouCanToo - I would very much like to do that, once the bugs (in the guide) are ironed out.
I assume I would need to establish an Account in order to add anything? 

Did you see this thread? ---

@Neal - Yes, I did.  I used a lot of material from it to prepare the guide, as well as two other threads I found particularly informative. 

It is not my intention to step on any toes here. 

I am posting these replies from a different machine than the one on which I prepared the material.
I intend to post what I have for review, correction, & clarification as soon as I complete another (personal) project that I am currently working on (hopefully no later than Monday, July 25 2011).

Best Regards to all until then,
 
Darryl

[TBercaht]

Here it is:   

Guide to MyLiveCD

I)   Preparation   {GUI}      (1),(2),(3)

  A)   System Update & Configuration

    1)   Fully update the system.

      a)   Open Synaptic, click Reload, Mark All Updates, Apply, Apply.

    2)   Install draklive-install (use Synaptic or approved package manager) before you run mylivecd.

  B)   Remove unnecessary files.

   Note regarding BleachBit (as user and root):   go to 'Preferences' menu and see what language you have checked.  Keep "en" as a fallback {if your language is not English}.  Keep your [installed] locale checked for the same reason.  In the whitelist section, add files and/or folders you do not want to be erased.

    1)   BleachBit   {PC Menu -> File Tools}

      a)   Leave everything under Apt, System and X11 unchecked.

    2)   BleachBit Root

      a)   Leave everything under Apt unchecked (except 'clean').

II)   Execution   {CLI}      (2),(3)

  A)   These commands must be run as root.

    1)   su      {enter root Password when prompted}

  B)   Unmount all other drives and partitions, leaving root (/) and /home mounted.

    1)   umount -a   {Not "unmount"}

      a)   Mylivecd will try to include every mounted partition and any mounted media.

  C)   Determine the size of your install and the amount of free space available.

    1)   df

      a)   Look under Used for the amount of space you have filled.
      The total for root (/) and /home (+ any other mounted partitions) should not exceed 10GB.

      b)   Look under Avail[able] for root (/).  This will show you how much free space you have available.
      If free space in root is less than the Used space, MyLiveCD will probably fail.
      It is recommended that you have at least 60% free space available on your root partition (this is the default location where MyLiveCD will store its temporary files and final *.iso image - it is not the only option).

  D)   Run MyLiveCD.

    1)   Display available options (there are many more options than those listed - explore!)

   a)   mylivecd --help      (4)

      *)   --nodir   Excludes directories from the final image.
         +)   Example:   --nodir ^/usr/src/RPM,^/root/tmp

      *)   --tmp    Name of the directory to be used for temporary file storage.
         +)   Example:   --tmp=/path/to/temporary/storage

    2)   Remaster your system

   a)   Example:   mylivecd <name>.iso   {Supply the <name> of your choice, default options would be used here}

III)   Completion   {That is to say, "after mylivecd has finished"}

  A)   exit      {From root terminal - to user terminal - unless root privileges are still needed}

  B)   exit      {Close user terminal - unless required for subsequent actions (i.e. Burning iso)}

    1)   {copy/paste terminal output into editor (first) if desired for future reference/troubleshooting}

  C)   Burn completed image (<name>.iso) to CD (or DVD), or save it somewhere safe (external HDD, etc).

    Sources used for this guide.
     (1)   How To Keep Your System In Good Order
     (2)   MyLiveCD/BleachBit
     (3)   2010 Remastering
     (4)   mylivecd --help

I would like to edit this post as comments, suggestions, recommendations, etc. are received.  

Your input is welcome.  

It has been my experience in the workplace that people often write 'procedures' based on their own understanding, but those same procedures 'don't make sense' to someone with a different understanding and background.  I hope to avoid this situation by posting this 'guide' here for you to review, criticize (constructively, of course  ), and correct where necessary.

EDIT:   Posted (some) modifications.  "Guide Rev A"      

Regards,

Darryl

[lysar]

Looks good, except for point II.C.1.b because it is possible to tell mylivecd to use a separate partition for both its temporary files and its final iso.

Also, it would be good to tell users how to exclude directories from the remaster.

Cheers 
Lysar

[melodie]

  B)   Remove unnecessary files.

    1)   BleachBit   {PC Menu -> File Tools}

      a)   Leave everything under Apt, System and X11 unchecked.

    2)   BleachBit Root

      a)   Leave everything under Apt unchecked.

Hi,

Bleachbit  : in Bleachbit-admin as in Bleachbit as user, go to menu Preferences, see what language you have ticked. You alsways need "en" as a fallback if your language is not English, and for the same reason keep checked the locale you have installed. In the whitelist section, add folders or and files you eventually never want to see erased.

    2)   BleachBit Root

      a)   Leave everything under Apt unchecked.

You might check... at least one. (clean).

You can go also to /usr/share/doc, and remove all directories, except HTML and any that you want to keep (most don't contain docs but licenses and author information... you may want to check if you are interested with some of the docs).

You can check what is in the /tmp directory, and remove almost all files in /var/log : not directories ! just the files. There is the prcsys.log file which must not be removed, because the system yells are reboot if it is not there.

That's all for now...

[hasmak]

It seems that mylivecd needs about 2.5 times the size of generated image in free space.
it will first build the work directory which is the same size of the image, then it will generate the image, it also needs some space for temporary files.
Example: you have a 4GB installation, that would produce an iso image about 1GB, you need 2.5GB free space

mylivecd does not compute the required size before starting, and it will attempt to build the image untill it runs out of space, then it will die with an error message.

To get over the limited free space problem, I used an external USB HDD.
I have a 1TB USB HDD with abou 400MB free space.
I moved all the contents of the drive to a temporray directory /xx and excluded the diretory from mylivecd
This is easier than excluding all directories from myliveccd
Notes:
1- create the empty /Temp, /Work, /Img directories on your drive before you start
2- Modify the command according to your media name and mount point
3- run mylivecd --help for more options
4- run mount and make sure your USB HDD is mounted

Here is the command and output.

=================================================================

[root@Linux hassanein]# mylivecd --verbose --nodir /media/SAMSUNG/xx --tmp /media/SAMSUNG/Temp --workdir /media/SAMSUNG/Work  /media/SAMSUNG/Img/My_USB_Img.iso
mylivecd, version 0.9.4, http://pclinuxos.com/
Copyright (C) 2010, Texstar <texstar at gmail.com>

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

WARNING: The temporary directory '/media/SAMSUNG/Work' will not be removed at exit, please do so manually
Disabling Services not needed on the LiveCD

running: /sbin/chkconfig --list
running: /sbin/chkconfig --list
running: /sbin/chkconfig --list
running: /sbin/chkconfig --list
running: /sbin/chkconfig --list


Creating initrd:                                   [100.00% 00:00:23/00:00:23]
Setting filesystem parameters:                     [100.00% 00:00:39/00:01:05]
Creating compressed image:                         [100.00% 01:43:44/01:45:06]
Creating isolinux boot:                            [100.00% 00:00:01/00:00:01]
Creating final iso:                                [100.00% 00:01:27/00:01:28]
                                                                              
Restoring Services on the installed system


Created '/media/SAMSUNG/Img/My_USB_Img.iso' (873,461,760 bytes) in 01:46:18

==========================================================================
I also used the same method to create the image on a windows partition on a dual boot system.

Note:
This method does not work with drives formatted as FAT32, the drive has to be native Linux (ext2 ext3) or NTFS
Good luck

[TBercaht]

Thank you lysar, melodie, and hasmak for your comments! 

Reply #4 has been edited to reflect some of your input, but I still have more work to do...

Guide is now at Revision A.

I.B.2.a    modified
II.C.1.b   modified
II.D       modified

Regards,

Darryl

[hasmak]

Thank you lysar, melodie, and hasmak for your comments!  

Darryl
Glad to be of service
One word about excluding directories and directory names with mylivecd
mylivecd can not process directory names that contain spaces example "My Documents Directory"
it will die with error: FATAL:  Too many command-line arguments.
to get over that, replace the spaces with \  example "My\Documents\Directory"

Also a note about the size of your installation.
mylivecd has a size limit for the final iso, As far as I can tell from looking around the size limit is either 4.3 GB (DVD size) or 4GB (file size limit as in windows Fat 32) I could not find definite official documentation to tell me which is the limit ;-(
For practical purposes consider the limit is 4GB
To keep your remastering lean, backup and remove or exclude all your data files (movies, music, photos, documents, pdf ...etc) all those files are transportable and storeable. What you really need for the remaster is the OS, installed applications, and whatever customization you have done. If you exclude all your data, an average installation will be about 6GB which will give you 1.5GB iso, and a complex installation will be about 12-16GB which will give you about 3-4GB iso

Cheers

[Neal ManBear]

The size limit is 4GB.     

[hasmak]

The size limit is 4GB.     

Thanks
Just to know, is this mylivecd limitation or file system limitation
Cheers

[Neal ManBear]

I believe it is the /union fs limit.

[AS]

I believe it is the /union fs limit.

iso9660 file size limit, see 2/4 GiB limit section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9660

[hasmak]

I believe it is the /union fs limit.

iso9660 file size limit, see 2/4 GiB limit section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9660

At the risk of this developing into a philosophical discussion, the ISO 9660 file size limit refers to the maximum single file size  that can be written to an optical disk, this is similar to the file size limitation of FAT32, this should not be confused with the image file size which is being written to hard disk, in the case of Linux mostly with file system ext2 ext3 ext4 which have 16GB limit, although the image file has the extension .iso, it is not being written to an ISO file system but to the file system of your writing media, in this case your HDD.
The image file with the the .iso extension is actually an archive of many files and directories, when it is decompressed to an optical media it deflates and re-creates the original file and directory structure.
please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems
From what I have been able to find out, the 4 or 4.3 GB limit is not due to ext file system, and under ext2-3-4 you can have an image file or any file whether it ends with .iso, .avi, .mkv  or any extension up to 16GB and up to 2TB in some special circumstances.
I have not been able to find documentation of the /union fs or the file size limit,
If you know of a link, please post it.
Cheers