Custom Linux bootable CD
From WBITT's Cooker!
This article is in relation to the article CENTOS Server CD project , and is "heavily" based on http://people.redhat.com/rkeech/custom-distro.txt . So here it goes.
First, the setup
My machine, on which I am doing all these steps / building the Custom CENTOS CD, is named kworkhorse, but will be referred to as the role buildhost in this text. It runs Fedora 11 64 bit.
I have a directory /data/cdimages, which contains full install tree of original CENTOS 5.4 64 bit CD in CENTOS-5.4-x86_64 subdirectory, and an empty CENTOS-5.4-x86_64-core (build) directory. The directory layout looks like the following:
[root@kworkhorse cdimages]# pwd /data/cdimages [root@kworkhorse cdimages]# tree -d . ├── CentOS-5.4-x86_64 │ ├── CentOS │ ├── images │ │ ├── pxeboot │ │ └── xen │ ├── isolinux │ ├── NOTES │ └── repodata └── CentOS-5.4-x86_64-core [root@kworkhorse cdimages]#
The directory /data/cdimages/CentOS-5.4-x86_64-core (which is empty at the moment), will be the custom install tree, and referred to as $RHROOT in this document.
Required Packages on the build host
Before you continue, you must install the following packages on your base OS.
yum -y install anaconda anaconda-runtime mkisofs cdrecord
Note: anaconda-runtime is RHEL/CENTOS specific package, and is part of the RHEL/CENTOS distribution. As evident below:
[kamran@kworkhorse CentOS]$ ls /data/cdimages/CentOS-5.4-x86_64/CentOS/anaconda-* -1 anaconda-11.1.2.195-1.el5.centos.x86_64.rpm anaconda-runtime-11.1.2.195-1.el5.centos.x86_64.rpm [kamran@kworkhorse CentOS]$
This package "anaconda-runtime" provides the following packages:
[kamran@kworkhorse CentOS]$ rpm -qpl anaconda-runtime-11.1.2.195-1.el5.centos.x86_64.rpm . . . /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/boot.msg /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/general.msg /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/options.msg /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/param.msg /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/rescue.msg /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/syslinux.cfg /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/buildinstall . . . . . . /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/pyrc.pyo /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/readmap /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/screenfont-x86_64.gz /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/scrubtree /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/splittree.py /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/splittree.pyc /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/splittree.pyo /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/trimmodalias /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/trimpciids /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/upd-instroot /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/yumcache . . . [kamran@kworkhorse CentOS]$
If you are using Fedora, you may not find anaconda-runtime. Instead anaconda and anaconda-runtime are merged into single package, which provides the same functionality :
[root@kworkhorse cdimages]# rpm -ql anaconda | grep runtime . . . /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/boot.msg /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/grub.conf /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/boot/syslinux.cfg /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/buildinstall /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/buildinstall.functions /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/genmodinfo /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/getkeymaps /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/keymaps-override-x86_64 /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/loader /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/loader/init /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/loader/loader . . . . . . /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/pyrc.pyc /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/pyrc.pyo /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/readmap /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/screenfont-x86_64.gz /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/scrubtree /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/trimpciids /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/upd-instroot /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/upd-updates . . . [root@kworkhorse cdimages]#
The environment variables
Quote from the original Howto: Many of the scripts provided in these packages are Python scripts. For them to work properly the PYTHONPATH variable must be set to /usr/lib/anaconda and be exported in the shell environment in which the commands are run. Many of the scripts are from the directory /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime, so either put this in the PATH or provide an absolute path to commands.
So, you should setup the necessary environment variables. I would advise you to add the following two lines to your ~/.bash_profile, so each time you open a terminal, these values are set.
export RHROOT=/data/cdimages/CentOS-5.4-x86_64-core export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/anaconda export PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib/anaconda-runtime
Note: It is important to note, that even on a 64 bit system (as I have), these two paths are /usr/lib/anaconda and /usr/lib/anacoda-runtime. i.e. These two directories does not exist in /usr/lib64.
