How Long Should it Take to Create Remaster?

[grnich]

I have made a remaster of a 2009.x version of MiniMe in the past, and it worked fine.  So I thought I'd make a remaster of my new Gnome 2010 load.  It's going slooooow and is pegging my CPU at 100%.   It seems to get stuck at 2.92% of creating compressed image.  I used the following commands:

umount -a
mylivecd --lzma --md5sum livecd.iso

[greg@localhost ~]$ df -a
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1              12G  2.6G  8.8G  23% /
none                     0     0     0   -  /proc
none                     0     0     0   -  /dev/pts
/dev/sda6              23G  2.1G   20G  10% /home
tmpfs                 759M  1.5M  758M   1% /dev/shm
[greg@localhost ~]$

a.  How long should it take to produce a typical remastered .iso?

b.  Is it normal to peg the cpu at 100%?  

c.  How do you exclude certain directories under /home (Music) so the remastered .iso doesn't exceed 700MB?

Don't think it's a hardware issue because I've made a remaster on the machine before.   I don't recall that it took such a long time.  Dell Latitude D800, PentiumM 1.4Ghz CPU, 1.5GB PC2700 RAM, 40GB HD.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[menotu]

Hi grnich,

The couple I've done recently (2010KDE) took approx 20mins, and although I wasn't  looking at CPU usage I don't think it was using anywhere near 100%

I continued browsing and stuff whilst the remaster was being created and I didn't feel any slowing down of my system.

As for excluding folders, 'fraid I don't know the switches/commands to carry that out. You could always move the data in the folders somewhere else and move them back after the cd has been created.

You may of already done this, but I would suggest doing the remaster after a fresh reboot, so you have all your systems resources available to you.

[grnich]

Hi grnich,

The couple I've done recently (2010KDE) took approx 20mins, and although I wasn't  looking at CPU usage I don't think it was using anywhere near 100%

I continued browsing and stuff whilst the remaster was being created and I didn't feel any slowing down of my system.

As for excluding folders, 'fraid I don't know the switches/commands to carry that out. You could always move the data in the folders somewhere else and move them back after the cd has been created.

You may of already done this, but I would suggest doing the remaster after a fresh reboot, so you have all your systems resources available to you.

Yes, I seem to recall it took me something around 20 mins to create a remaster of my MiniMe 2009.x load awhile back.  This seems waaay slower.  Does it matter where you create the .iso image?  Where is the recommended locatio.  I tried the remaster command after a reboot and it seems to be running just as slowly as before, still pegging CPU @ 100%.

[menotu]

Hi grnich,

The couple I've done recently (2010KDE) took approx 20mins, and although I wasn't  looking at CPU usage I don't think it was using anywhere near 100%

I continued browsing and stuff whilst the remaster was being created and I didn't feel any slowing down of my system.

As for excluding folders, 'fraid I don't know the switches/commands to carry that out. You could always move the data in the folders somewhere else and move them back after the cd has been created.

You may of already done this, but I would suggest doing the remaster after a fresh reboot, so you have all your systems resources available to you.

Yes, I seem to recall it took me something around 20 mins to create a remaster of my MiniMe 2009.x load awhile back.  This seems waaay slower.  Does it matter where you create the .iso image?  Where is the recommended locatio.  I tried the remaster command after a reboot and it seems to be running just as slowly as before, still pegging CPU @ 100%.

How much free space do you have?

It shouldn't matter where the image is created (unless its a partition/drive which is too small for it)

It should use / for the creation process and then drop it in /home when its completed.

Do you have any apps / services running in the background which can be stopped or disabled?

[kjpetrie]

Your tmpfs is too small to hold the working directory and temp directory. I presume you selected "clean tmp at each boot" which means tmp is stored in RAM. When you run out of RAM the kernel will start swapping pages, desperately trying to find room in your swap partition, which is probably also too small for this job.

You either need to get rid of that clean tmp thing or you need to look at mylivecd --help and tell it to create its temp and workdir on your /home partition where there's plenty of room. Make sure the path is excluded from the remaster, though, otherwise you will create a loop which will go on until the remaster exceeds the maximum size.

[grnich]

Tried it again using switches to exclude some directories, point tmp area to a partition large enough to hold the iso, and exclude that directory from the path/image.  Used this command and and got an error:

mylivecd --lzma --md5sum --tmp /home/greg/Downloads/ --nodir /home/greg/Downloads/ --nodir /home/greg/Pictures/--nodir /home/greg/Music/ --img remaster.iso
Subroutine run_program::formatError redefined at /usr/lib/libDrakX/common.pm line 8
mylivecd, version 0.9.0, http://pclinuxos.com/
Copyright (C) 2010, Texstar <texstar at gmail.com>

[melodie]

You either need to get rid of that clean tmp thing...

Hi, to do that is easy : add a # at the beginning of the line containing "tmpfs" in the file /etc/fstab, then REBOOT. After the remaster will be done, you can remove the # from there and at the following session the tmp thing will be active again.

Used this command and and got an error:

mylivecd --lzma --md5sum --tmp /home/greg/Downloads/ --nodir /home/greg/Downloads/ --nodir /home/greg/Pictures/--nodir /home/greg/Music/ --img remaster.iso
Subroutine run_program::formatError redefined at /usr/lib/libDrakX/common.pm line 8

On another thread some time ago, Texstar told me I could safely ignore it.

[wayne1932]

@rick2210

Did you mean to say "many parts ... are not correct"?   If so what parts do you know that are wrong?  There used to be some GUI scripts for livecd, I can't find them, is "mylivecd" now a CLI only program?

[grnich]

Well, I let it run overnight, and the command completed, but the remaster was 2.5GB in size.  I thought I excluded directories that would have made it very large, but maybe my command syntax was wrong.

Assuming I was able to correctly exclude the selected directories under /home, the remaster should be a manageable size; my / partition is only  2.6GB in size.  

So the remaster worked; it's just too big to burn to CD.

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1              12G  2.6G  8.7G  23% /
none                     0     0     0   -  /proc
none                     0     0     0   -  /dev/pts
/dev/sda6              23G  2.5G   20G  12% /home
tmpfs                 759M  1.5M  758M   1% /dev/shm

[melodie]

So the remaster worked; it's just too big to burn to CD.

Hi grnich,
What about trying to install it from pendrive ? (grub + isolinux directory + livecd.sqfs file)

[grnich]

This is starting to hit the crossover point to where it's taking me more time to (un)successfully create a remaster than it would take to reload a system from scratch if I find it necessary to do so.

When I created a previous remaster of a MiniMe 2009.x, I remember it being a simple gui that I just made some checks in blocks to configure it.  Simple process, took around 20min to build the .iso.

What happened to that simple gui tool?

-- grnich

[grnich]

@rick2210

Did you mean to say "many parts ... are not correct"?   If so what parts do you know that are wrong?  There used to be some GUI scripts for livecd, I can't find them, is "mylivecd" now a CLI only program?

--nodir /home/greg/Downloads/ --nodir /home/greg/Pictures/--nodir /home/greg/Music/

should be

--nodir=^/home/greg/Downloads/,^/home/greg/Pictures/,^/home/greg/Music/

I tried it using your syntax to exclude large /home subfolders, but the ISO still comes out at 1.6GB. Why is it so big when I just recentlly did a HD installl of the 2010 Gnome version?  If ti came off the install CD at 700MB, why won't it go back via compression to a remaster?  I haven't added but a couple of apps, nothinig big.

[kjpetrie]

I found I had to leave the slashes off the end to get it to work, so your option would become:

--nodir=^/home/greg/Downloads,^/home/greg/Pictures,^/home/greg/Music

[melodie]

Hi,

The content of the directories meant to be included in the remaster should not exceed about 2400Mo, in order to fit into a 700 Mo max iso. (compressed with the --lzma option).

For example, if you do in console "dh -m" you will get the size for all the mounted partitions. If you want to take out the size of the directories that you will exclude, you could invoke in console "du -csm a_directory".

I hope this can help...

[YouCanToo]

@rick2210

Did you mean to say "many parts ... are not correct"?   If so what parts do you know that are wrong?  There used to be some GUI scripts for livecd, I can't find them, is "mylivecd" now a CLI only program?

--nodir /home/greg/Downloads/ --nodir /home/greg/Pictures/--nodir /home/greg/Music/

should be

--nodir=^/home/greg/Downloads/,^/home/greg/Pictures/,^/home/greg/Music/

I tried it using your syntax to exclude large /home subfolders, but the ISO still comes out at 1.6GB. Why is it so big when I just recentlly did a HD installl of the 2010 Gnome version?  If ti came off the install CD at 700MB, why won't it go back via compression to a remaster?  I haven't added but a couple of apps, nothinig big.

Have you done any updates to your system? That is going to make it a whole lot larger that the original iso.