Installers for Homebrew Linux Distributions?

An anonymous reader asks: "With the relatively easy instructions available from various sources (LSF being one), it's fairly easy now for just about any relatively advanced Linux user to create their own distro. I'm well into creating a distribution (for my friends and myself, nothing major), but I can't seem to find any real projects out there to actually go through an installation process. Anaconda is there, but the lack of documentation is serious. Are there any others out there? If not, what would be required to create one? An obvious start would be a stripped down, bootable Linux CD, and an application to handle partitioning, formatting, setting up the filesystem, and installing packages (of whatever sort), but what all has been done before?"

Comments

LFS

[pb]

Linux From Scratch

Re:LFS

[Tumbleweed]

I think he mentioned he wanted an installation process.

I think a good candidate might be ALFS - the Automated Linux From Scratch. Also remember that LFS only gets you a barebones system that's not really all that usable except to start installing software onto, so you'll need to also check out the 'Beyond LFS' project to get a usable desktop system, if that's what you're after.

If your 'distribution' won't be 'customizable', then just make the CD bootable and copy the setup or a disk image onto the HD.

Re:LFS

[pb]

That wasn't a recommendation; it was a correction. Note that the article link said "LSF".

I use Gentoo, and the "installer" was fine with me, but there are a lot of real installers out there, even GPL'd ones. Major distributions have written and use them.

There are also tons of tiny distros and bootable Linuxes out there, from tomsrtbt to KNOPPIX; you could use any of them as a starting point, bootstrapping into your installer of choice.

KNOPPIX is a good start...

[ubiquitin]

...and the article Custom Debian CD from Knoppix tells you how.

Slinky

[himynameisbrak]

The RULE Project provides a simple installer using Bash scripts. It is highly modifiable. It uses very little RAM, which allows it to fulfill its primary purpose, that being to enable the most recent Red Hat Linux distributions to be installed on low-end hardware. They call their lean 'n' mean installer Slinky. It is currently under active development and probably could still use some usability improvements, but it is a fully-functional installer with minimal overhead.

Gentoo

[bpb213]

Sorry, I know you dont want a 'distribution', but gentoo gives you full control over everything, from scratch. That, and gentoo's emerge is extrely easy to use and will watch all your dependancies for you.

live cd with knoppix style installer

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the idea of a CD that can boot and run the distribution. This provides a way for people to try it out and inspect it, and a great rescue system.

Installers that work by essentially copying the live cd to the harddrive and then making the necessary changes to the boot loader and /etc/fstab are the way to go, in my opinion.

I was interested in the slackware live cd for this reason, especially since I can modify a slackware which is on a hard drive until it has exactly what I want, and then run there scripts to build a bootable CD from that.

Gentoo, slackware....

[(startx)]

Well, you could go the Gentoo route and not provide an installer at all, but provide instructions on how to do it yourself instead.

Or, you could use parts of Slackware's installer. It began as a distro for Pat V. and his friends.....

Re:Gentoo, slackware....

[Micro$will]

I like the Slackware way. If I remember correctly, its just a basic boot/root floppy set, and the rest of the installation is just tar.gz files with shell scripts stuck in for pre/post install stuff.

I played with LFS a while back and even had X up and running with my old window manager Afterstep. Too bad a friend needed the drive in an emergency, I never got the chance to "can" it for future use.

GLIS

[Higman]

GLIS is an installer for Gentoo. Since the Gentoo install is pretty manual, this might be generic enough for your needs.

Damn Small Linux and bootable business card

[ubiquitin]

If you are facing size restrictions (older, smaller hard drives) or wanting to work with smart-card-bootable systems, check out: Damn Small Linux which fits everything into less than 50 megabytes, as does the bootable business card distro.

base it on Debian

[Olhado]

I know everyone says debian has a terrible installation, but for anyone who has run linux for a little while, it really shouldn't be a problem. Probably not exactly what you were looking for but there are lots of commercial distros that have taken this route (xandros, libranet, etc).

Besides then you can use PGI and there is good documentation on starting a debian subproject here and as a debian package

Plus even if you don't want to use debian as a base all the installation code is open so you may just be able to learn something from it and they are still trying to rewrite the installation, so maybe you could help an existing project in the process! That's really the open source ideal isn't it?

Re:base it on Debian

[R0]

dpkg-repack and kernel-package are worth a look.

MORPHIX

[jspraul]

is designed for your needs.

here