Ubuntu derivatives : howto ?

[Colin Watson]

On Mon, Nov 22, 2004 at 04:49:00PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> - A custom list of packages

Modify debootstrap-udeb for the base system. For the desktop, either
change the packages that have "Task: ubuntu-desktop" lines in
/dists/warty/main/binary-$ARCH/Packages* (fiddly) or modify base-config
(lib/menu/pkgsel).

> - a /etc/apt/sources.list modified to include universe and multiverse by
>   default.

Modify base-config (apt-setup). Switching a single Default: entry in
apt-setup.templates should be sufficient for universe; for multiverse,
you'll need to add some code.

> However, as a first step, and to get a better understanding of the build
> process, I'd be happy with how to regenerate the warty ISO.

The easiest way - once you get used to it - is to start from an existing
one and modify it. Mount it loopback, copy the tree, and for each .deb
or .udeb file you replace make sure that you edit the Version:,
Filename:, MD5sum:, and Size: fields in the appropriate Packages file in
/dists. Then:

  mkisofs -r -V 'Ubuntu 4.10 i386 Bin-1' -o warty-install-i386-hacked.iso -cache-inodes -J -l -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table new-i386

(assuming that the modified CD tree is in new-i386)

This is obviously a rather manual process, and if you want to try to get
the scripts we use to build a CD totally from scratch then you're
welcome to try. You'll need a local mirror of Warty for your
architecture. The code is at
http://cdimage.ubuntulinux.org/code/debian-cd.tar.bz2, but debian-cd is
notoriously hard to get to grips with.

> - Warty's installer can't resize Windows partitions during installation.
>   100% of our "customers" need to resize a Windows partition before
>   installing. And asking them to use third-party software (Knoppix,
>   Partition Magic) is not acceptable : they are mostly computer newbies,
>   and installing GNU/Linux is already a big enough challenge.

That feature was committed to Debian too late for Warty, but it's
already in Hoary. Hoary is unlikely to be suitable for you yet, though.

You'll need to add ntfstools-udeb, and probably backport most of
partman. Taking all the partman* packages from Hoary might well be the
simplest approach; they should work as long as you take the lot.


I'm sorry that this is still so awkward. The necessary tools are in
progress.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                    [cjwatson at canonical.com]