Building a fedora-based custom "distribution" (w/ tool)

https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/33149/building-a-fedora-based-custom-distribution-w-tool/

Q

Hello, I need to create on a USB stick a "custom distribution" based on Fedora, possibly with a tool which does the dirty work.

Ideally, I want to pick a Fedora version, pick some packages I need, and then this automagic tool would configure a fedora-based distribution which I would then move on the USB stick for live usage (e.g. with Fedora LiveUSB tool).

This is because I often suggest Fedora to friends (Windows users), but they need particular tools or programs and they do not want to install Linux on the hard drive. So, I thought, if I can produce a tailor-made distribution for each of them that they can use on a Live USB without the need of installing or upgrading or anything (but, maybe, with a small persistent storage for saving custom settings), they would probably use it.

Any suggestion about this?

A

I'm not going to give you every detail, but I'm going to show you some tools that will help you. I suspect that what you want is a "kickstart installation".

To create a custom Fedora spin, you can create a kickstart file with the help of system-config-kickstart (also install spin-kickstarts). Read more info here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Kickstart

To compose the iso image, you can use pungi. See more info here:

https://fedorahosted.org/pungi/wiki/PungiDocs/RunningPungi

To install the iso image to a USB stick, you can use liveusb-creator. It also has the option to add persistent storage. More info here:

https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator

The command to install those programs is:

# yum install system-config-kickstart pungi spin-kickstarts liveusb-creator

HTH,

Germán.

link

Comments

This is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks :)

akiross  ( Oct 1 '13 )

You are welcome! Happy hacking! :)

skytux  ( Oct 1 '13 )