Talk:How to create and use a Live CD

Introduction

This page explains how to make a custom-content Live CD or DVD on Fedora-based systems including derived distributions such as RHEL, CentOS and others.

If you simply want to burn a pre-made ISO to a disc, visit http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora to download a LiveCD or LiveDVD, then see the install guide or burning how-to for further instructions.

See the project wiki for more details. Discussion of this project takes places at http://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/livecd.

Instructions

The basic workflow for creating a remix is:

1. Create a kickstart file that specifies the packages you want installed on your remix, along with special settings you want to tweak.
2. Run that kickstart file through livecd-creator, which will pull in the packages and compose an .iso, which you can then burn to CD.

...that's it! We will walk you through these steps below.

Choose a kickstart file as a base for your remix

Kickstart files are configuration files. They contain settings for tools, such as:

• pungi (for the creation of install disks),
• livecd-creator (for the creation of live images)
• anaconda (the built-in installer)

You can see examples of kickstart files in the spin-kickstart repository. These are the kickstart files for the spins displayed at http://spins.fedoraproject.org.

Since we are creating a LiveCD, we want a kickstart file for livecd-creator. Chances are good that an existing LiveCD kickstart already contains most of the things we need, like a graphical dekstop environment, drivers, and the ability to make live images persistent (for installation on a liveUSB rather than a liveCD). Therefore, in order to avoid reinventing the wheel, we're going to start by picking an existing kickstart for a LiveCD to base our remix's kickstart from.

There are currently two kickstart files that provide the main configuration to setup the live images. Pick one of these two:

• fedora-live-base.ks: The file used for most composes. If you don't know where to start, this is a good default choice.
• fedora-live-mini.ks: A trimmed-down edition of the first file, mostly used by the Mini SIG for size-sensitive purposes. If space-saving is a primary concern, choose this one.

<what do you do once you've picked one of the two .ks files? mmm, customization guide>... maybe it'd just make sense to generalize the customization guide? well, we got probably a little too far here already for that.

• reading*

Create a kickstart file

1. Create an empty text document in the editor of your choice.
2. Import the base kickstart file you chose above:

%include fedora-live-base.ks

1. Create the package manifest section and add your favorite packages:

%packages foo baz bar %end

1. Congrats -- you're done!

Build the image

You'll need the livecd-creator tool. Go and install it as root:

• yum install livecd-creator

The build process will take some time, as well as space and bandwidth.

Adjust the image

ZOMG it's too big! How to cut stuff. See #Release management for more notes. (make that section)

Distribute the image

Now you have an .iso. What do you do with it?