Re: [gentoo-user] Modifying LiveCDs

[Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Jonas de Buhr <jonas.de.buhr@gmx.net> wrote:
>>> http://lmgtfy.com/?q=build+your+own+live+cd+gentoo
>>
>>Not so useful, thanks. Google fails me regularly. Personalized
>>searches are getting to be a real sore spot for me; not just mine, but
>>those of people pointing me at Google assuming my searches for the
>>same keywords will get the same results. Particular grating is when
>>someone sends me a link to a search, then the link to what I was
>>looking for, and says something like "first hit". My first *page*
>>didn't even have that link on it.
>
> well... i didn't know if it was ok to post links to unofficial gentoo
> resources on this list which is why i went with the search.

Posting direct links should be absolutely fine, IMO. My fiancee shares
my frustrations with LMGTFY responses; she'll google for a phrase, and
the first few results will be forum and newsgroup mirrors of threads
along the lines of:

"How do I do $x"
"Google for "$phrase_just_googled_for"

>
>>> alternatively you could use catalyst:
>>> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/catalyst/
>>>
>>> or you just mount the iso, modify it, run mkisofs on it and burn it.
>>> the mkisofs options you are looking for are -b and -c.
>>
>>I knew there was going to be something I wasn't going to know, and it
>>looks like the values passed to -b and -c are it.
>
> again, the hint you maybe didn't get was: you will have to do some of
> the work yourself.

If I wasn't willing to do some of the work myself, I wouldn't be using
Gentoo. I'd be using Ubuntu. Or wearign diapers. Thanks.

>
>>I don't want to build a CD from scratch (and doing so looks like it
>>would require setting up a fully "generic" box to build). I just want
>>to add two files to an existing ISO.
>>
>>How would I extract boot_catalog and eltorito_boot_image from an
>>existing ISO?
>
> you can actually omit -c i think. use isolinux.bin (should be on the
> livecd) as boot image.

Huh. Ok; when I glanced through the man page for mkisofs, I got the
impression that the files added by -b and -c wouldn't appear on the
filesystem. I don't know how El Torido actually works, at the ISO
level, I only know it's something like a bootable floppy image that a
capable BIOS loads and executes.

-- 
:wq