Preparing for the CD ¶

There are some small but important steps to take first, however. The CD wants a list of the packages on your system, which you can get using dpkg-query, using this recipe:

$ sudo chroot $WORK/new dpkg-query -W --showformat='${Package} ${Version}\n' | grep -v deinstall > $WORK/ubuntu-livecd/casper/filesystem.manifest

When the Live installer runs, it copies everything to the target system, but then cleans up by removing packages which are not listed in a second manifest file. This must be done to allow your installation of live CD to install the customized version; otherwise, it will remove all your customizations when you install the live cd to hard drive.

I manage this by filtering the manifest we just created using a sed script:

$ cat > /tmp/$$.control <<FOO
/casper/d
/libdebian-installer4/d
/os-prober/d
/ubiquity/d
/ubuntu-live/d
/user-setup/d
FOO

$ sed -f /tmp/$$.control < $WORK/ubuntu-livecd/casper/filesystem.manifest > $WORK/ubuntu-livecd/casper/filesystem.manifest-desktop
$ rm /tmp/$$.control


8 Build the modified compressed filesystem ¶

$ sudo rm $WORK/ubuntu-livecd/casper/filesystem.squashfs
$ cd $WORK/new
$ sudo mksquashfs . $WORK/ubuntu-livecd/casper/filesystem.squashfs
Note: I just downloaded a copy of "squashfs3.0" and ran the command above from ir's bin directory. but if you can successfully install squashfs on your system you wouldn't need this.