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How to Easily Make Custom Linux Install ISOs?

Posted by Cliff on from the making-your-own-mark-on-Linux dept.

Jason Tilke asks: "I recently read an article which discusses HP's LinuxCOE v4. We've been wanting a system to make rolling out custom but standardized systems (in terms of package selection) and LinuxCOE seems to fit the bill. Are there any alternative that'll spit out custom ISOs which our non-technical staff can use to install a complete Linux system? Has anyone had any positive/negative experience with LinuxCOE? Are there any precautions/steps we should take to prevent us from tripping over our new changes?"

4 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. Fedora 7 by groovebot · · Score: 5, Informative

    Check out Fedora 7 which has tool to make easy "respins."

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    1. Re:Fedora 7 by fishybell · · Score: 4, Informative
      It's been easy to make a reformed version of Fedora, and the various Redhats, for some time. There hasn't been a GUI tool for it before, and they haven't called it a respin, but they've been there.


      See here for example. It tells how to generate new ISO images from the original ISOs and updated RPMs. I've personally used the tools to build stripped down versions of Redhat/Fedora that include everything I need, but on a single CD. You can also include a kickstart file on the CD so that you can give a "linux ks=cdrom" at the initial install prompt to run a fully automated install. I don't think Redhat would have ever been as useful to corporations had it not had this option. Why install old RPMs? Install the OS with the latest, greatest everything.

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  2. Knoppix. by pla · · Score: 4, Informative

    Are there any alternative that'll spit out custom ISOs which our non-technical staff can use to install a complete Linux system?

    Take a look at Knoppix Remastering.

    In a former life, I used to build custom embedded Linux distros as the base platform for other company projects; Knoppix makes it so easy, if I hadn't already moved on from that job, it would have sent me to the unemployment line.

    Actually, I exagerate a tad there - Knoppix makes it almost trivial to get a customized Debian-based system down to the 40-50MB range; On my most challenging project, I managed to get a stable system running custom builds of X and Mozilla to fit on a 16MB flash disk. But presuming you don't have quite such minimalistic hardware requirements, Knoppix makes the task a breeze. Just unpack it, chroot into it, "apt-get remove" whatever you don't want and build whatever else you do, and roll it back into a cloop'd iso. C'est fini.



    For comparison, I usually prefer to run Slackware as my normal Linux distro, and looked into Slax before Knoppix. For some tasks you might find it easier to work with, as it uses a more modular approach, but I found that far more limiting and inconvenient if you want to make fine-grained tweaks or even just alter configuration details without swapping out whole packages.

  3. Re:Take a look at these two? by cblack · · Score: 4, Informative

    Note that the Ubuntu Customization Kit you mentioned is aimed at creating custom ISOs for LIVE CDs, not for actual installation. A good place to get info on creating install cds is https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallCDCustomi zation