I Want To Build My Own Version Of Suse.

Greetings folks. I was thinking about how I would go about creating a Suse installation DVD that would come with, and install automatically, more packages than the regular 10.3 DVD does. This would be useful for giving to my friends who are currently windows users. At least one of them wants to try out Linux, but he doesn't want to have to use any sort of package manager or compiler right off the bat. I want to help him, and others, get up and running quickly by building an install DVD that will automatically install VLC, K3B and all the DVD player codecs, and a lot of other programs that aren't automatically installed by Suse. I don't know where to begin on this project, though. Does anyone know how I can get the ball rolling?

Here is a suggestion for your freinds who just want to test drive. Install VirtualBox (free download) on their Windows and make a Virtual Hard Disk of Suse with what you want installed, burn it to dvd. no messing with partitioning and such and if they dont like it just delete the file and uninstall VirtualBox.

Kiwi

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/.../openSUSE_10.3/

install kiwi and look at the rest of the kiwi packages (you probably want atleast kiwi-desc-isoboot)

Fire up yast and find a nice new module there


Edit: forgot that you need yast2-add-on-creator or yast2-product-creator too for the yast2 part depending on what you want to do

Wow, those are both good ideas! Thanks guys! I can get them going on Suse right away with virtualbox. I thought it was only available for Linux, but I guess I was wrong. I will work on getting Kiwi working too.

I'm getting some errors. Trying to figure out what's going wrong. I'll post if I can figure it out.

linux:/usr/share/kiwi/image/isoboot/suse-10.3 # ls
cdboot config config.xml images.sh root
linux:/usr/share/kiwi/image/isoboot/suse-10.3 # kiwi --prepare /usr/share/kiwi/image/isoboot/suse-10.3/config.xml --root /tmp/myroot
Mar-28 14:46 <1> : Reading image description... failed
Mar-28 14:46 <3> : Cannot open control file: /usr/share/kiwi/image/isoboot/suse-10.3/config.xml failed
Mar-28 14:46 <3> : KIWI exited with error(s) done

Edit: Ok, I tried doing it via command line, which is more difficult than using the yast module. Thanks, lznogood, for those instructions. Now I have a module right in yast that has a kiwi fruit as its icon. I tried using the GUI to create a boot DVD, but the program hangs in the "Preparing for image creation" menu and does not continue. I get the little swirly timer that's still moving, an hour later.

Could be a bug, I don't know.

Check out #opensuse-kiwi on freenode, They should be able to help you out

Is that an irc chat room? I use Bitlbee, so I would probably be able to connect to that. I can't figure out if that's a chatroom or a forum. Doing a google search hasn't helped me.

yeah irc chatroom : server is irc.freenode.net

Thanks for all your help. I connected to the irc server. I am figuring out how to find a user and ask for help. I'll have to familiarize myself with irc chat and read the help file again.

19:50 -!- You're now known as GoSuse
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19:51 -!- Current local users: 3557 Max: 4302
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19:51 -!- Highest connection count: 4304 (4302 clients) (679542 since server was (re)started)
[19:52] [GoSuse(+i)] [1:freenode (change with ^X)]
[(status)]

/join #opensuse-kiwi