INTRO ----- livemedia-creator uses Anaconda, kickstart and Lorax to create bootable media such as live iso's that use the same install path as a normal system install. The general idea is to use virt-install to install into a disk image and then use the disk image to create the bootable media. livemedia-creator --help will describe all of the options available. At the minimum you need: --make-iso to create a final bootable .iso --iso to specify the Anaconda install media to use with virt-install --ks is the kickstart to use to install the system QUICKSTART ---------- sudo livemedia-creator --make-iso \ --iso=/extra/iso/Fedora-16-x86_64-netinst.iso --ks=./fedora-livemedia.ks If you are using the lorax git repo you can run it like so: sudo PATH=./src/sbin/:$PATH PYTHONPATH=./src/ ./src/sbin/livemedia-creator \ --make-iso --iso=/extra/iso/Fedora-16-x86_64-netinst.iso \ --ks=./docs/livemedia-example.ks --lorax-templates=./share/ If you want to watch the install you can pass '--vnc vnc' and use a vnc client to connect to localhost:0 This is usually a good idea when testing changes to the kickstart. It tries to monitor the logs for fatal errors, but may not catch everything. HOW IT WORKS ------------ The --make-* switches define the final output. Currently only --make-iso and --make-disk are working. You then need to either pass --iso and --ks in order to create a disk image using virt-install, or --disk-image to use a disk image from a previous run to create the .iso virt-install boots using the passed Anaconda installer iso and installs the system based on the kickstart. The %post section of the kickstart is used to customize the installed system in the same way that current spin-kickstarts do. livemedia-creator monitors the install process for problems by watching the install logs. They are written to the current directory or to the base directory specified by the --logfile command. You can also monitor the install by passing --vnc vnc and using a vnc client. This is recommended when first modifying a kickstart, since there are still places where Anaconda may get stuck without the log monitor catching it. The output from this process is a partitioned disk image. kpartx can be used to mount and examine it when there is a problem with the install. It can also be booted using kvm. Once the disk image is created it copies the / partition into a formatted disk image which is then used as the input to lorax for creation of the final media. The final image is created by lorax, using the templates in /usr/share/lorax/ or the directory specified by --lorax-templates Currently the standard lorax templates are used to make a bootable iso, but it should be possible to modify them to output other results. They are written using the Mako template system which is very flexible. KICKSTARTS ---------- Existing spin kickstarts can be used to create live media with a few changes. Here are the steps I used to convert the XFCE spin. 1. Flatten the xfce kickstart using ksflatten 2. Add zerombr so you don't get the disk init dialog 3. Add clearpart --all 4. Add swap and biosboot partitions 5. bootloader target 6. Add shutdown to the kickstart 7. Add network --bootproto=dhcp --activate to activate the network This works for F16 builds but for F15 and before you need to pass something on the cmdline that activate the network, like sshd. livemedia-creator --kernel-args="sshd" 8. Add a root password rootpw rootme network --bootproto=dhcp --activate zerombr clearpart --all bootloader --location=mbr part biosboot --size=1 part swap --size=512 shutdown 9. In the livesys script section of the %post remove the root password. This really depends on how the spin wants to work. You could add the live user that you create to the %wheel group so that sudo works if you wanted to. passwd -d root > /dev/null 10. Remove /etc/fstab in %post, dracut handles mounting the rootfs cat /dev/null > /dev/fstab 11. Don't delete initramfs files from /boot in %post 12. Have grub-efi in the package list One drawback to using virt-install is that it pulls the packages from the repo each time you run it. To speed things up you either need a local mirror of the packages, or you can use a caching proxy. When using a proxy you pass it to livemedia-creator like so: --kernel-args="proxy=http://proxy.yourdomain.com:3128" You also need to use a specific mirror instead of mirrormanager so that the packages will get cached: url --url="http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/development/16/x86_64/os/" You can also add an update repo, but don't name it updates. Add --proxy to it as well. ANACONDA IMAGE INSTALL ---------------------- You can create images without using virt-install by passing --no-virt on the cmdline. This will use Anaconda's image install feature to handle the install. There are a couple of things to keep in mind when doing this: 1. It will be most reliable when building images for the same release that the host is running. Because Anaconda has expectations about the system it is running under you may encounter strange bugs if you try to build newer or older releases. 2. Make sure selinux is set to permissive or disabled. It won't install correctly with selinux set to enforcing yet. 3. It may totally trash your host. So far I haven't had this happen, but the possibility exists that a bug in Anaconda could result in it operating on real devices. I recommend running it in a virt or on a system that you can afford to lose all data from. The logs from anaconda will be placed in an ./anaconda/ directory in either the current directory or in the directory used for --logfile Example cmdline: sudo livemedia-creator --make-iso --no-virt --ks=./fedora-livemedia.ks DEBUGGING PROBLEMS ------------------ Cleaning up an aborted (ctrl-c) virt-install run (as root): virsh list to show the name of the virt virsh destroy virsh undefine umount /tmp/tmpXXXX rm -rf /tmp/tmpXXXX rm /tmp/diskXXXXX The logs from the virt-install run are stored in virt-install.log, logs from livemedia-creator are in livemedia.log and program.log You can add --image-only to skip the .iso creation and examine the resulting disk image. Or you can pass --keep-image to keep it around after lorax is run. Cleaning up aborted --no-virt installs can sometimes be accomplished by running the anaconda-cleanup script. THE FUTURE ---------- The current release only supports creating live iso's. In the future I want it to be able to create ami images as well as appliance images. It is also limited to x86 architectures because of it's use of virt-install. I hope to be able to support other arches by using Anaconda's image install feature instead of virt-install. This will require that livemedia-creator be running on the same release as is being created in order to avoid odd problems. I would like to provide a set of alternate lorax template scripts to create other media. HACKING ------- Development on this will take place as part of the lorax project, and on the anaconda-devel-list mailing list. Feedback, enhancements and bugs are welcome. You can use http://bugzilla.redhat.com to report bugs.