Das U-Blog by Prashanth: How-To: Remaster Debian 6 "Squeeze"

How-To: Remaster Debian 6 "Squeeze"

There are a couple of qualifications to "Debian". In fact, this isn't really a general guide for Debian itself, but it's more for Linux Mint "Debian". In any case, because Linux Mint "Debian" is pointed towards the Testing repositories by default, for standard Debian, the procedure will still be similar anyway.
I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know that the latest versions of Fresh OS are up on my SourceForge site. Yay! These are the download links, and I am also going to link to the project wiki as well. I'm still working on the wiki, so please be patient. In any case, I strongly recommend that you try it out (and if you're especially bold, install it (though be warned that the installer is the Remastersys installer which isn't very consistent), and please let me know what you think either in this blog's comments or in a review on the project's SourceForge page. Thanks!
So this post is just going to be about how I did it. Follow the jump to read more (and to see screenshots of the finished product).

I've already reviewed Linux Mint "Debian" before, and that review also covers the installation process. I did this all in VirtualBox (and as I made 3 somewhat different respins, I had 3 different virtual hard disks).
Post-installation, I downloaded all upgrades as well as all of the packages that I wanted. As this was the making of Fresh OS, these included the new Mint Menu and Mint icons/desktop theme from the Linux Mint unstable ("Romeo") repositories. I then added Hadret's Debian PPA (repository) to the list of repositories in Synaptic Package Manager. I then installed packages from that repository, including the Nautilus Elementary mod and the GNOME global application menu panel applet. Finally, I fiddled with the software selection, replacing F-Spot with Shotwell (and sometimes OpenOffice.org with Abiword and Gnumeric or Rhythmbox with DeaDBeeF).
After that, I went to the Remastersys website, added the repository to the list in Synaptic Package Manager, and installed it. Before anything else, I copied all the hidden files and folders (using "gksu nautilus" for a root file manager and Ctrl+H to show hidden folders) to the directory "/etc/skel/". This allows Remastersys to actually incorporate custom configurations into the ISO file. I then just ran "sudo remastersys backup" in the terminal and an ISO file was created.

Finally, to get this from my virtual hard disk to my real hard disk, I installed Guest Additions in the virtual machine, ran the shell script from the Guest Additions virtual CD in the virtual machine to fully install Guest Additions, and then restarted. I then mounted a dedicated folder on my real hard disk named "hostshare" onto the virtual hard disk's folder "~/Public" using "sudo mount -t vboxsf hostshare ~/Public". I then transferred the files, unmounted, and had a working ISO! It really is that simple! Thanks, Fragadelic (the lead developer of Remastersys)! Oh, and while you're at it, when can I expect a working version of Remastersys for Debian 6 "Squeeze" capable of the Dist option (instead of just the Backup option)?
(UPDATE: It seems like clickable (expandable) images are back! Yay!)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, thanks for the post.
I've bookmarked it for my reference once I have time to try remastersys.
Please inform what files or folder did you copied to /etc/skel.
Btw, do you mind to share the theme of this blog, I really like it :)

November 4, 2010 10:55 AM

PV said...

@Anonymous: All I did was show all the hidden files in the user's (/home/$USER/, in my case it was /home/live/) folder and copy all of those hidden files and folders (the folders and files with a period in front of the name) to /etc/skel/ (and replace/merge files and folders as necessary (when prompted)). Also, because you asked, I'll post the full HTML of this template in a new post (hopefully in the next couple days). How does that sound? (In truth, this was actually a WordPress template that I adapted to Blogger using my extremely limited HTML/CSS skills. Since then, I've changed the layout of the blog to retain the same general theme while working more nicely with gadgets, but it isn't exactly the same as before.) Anyway, thanks for the comment!

November 4, 2010 3:42 PM

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Das U-Blog by Prashanth by Prashanth Venkataram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Go there....
http://dasublogbyprashanth.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-to-remaster-debian-6-squeeze.html

Interesting way of doing a Remix. I'll have to see if I can do that too...

Don