[ale] how do I make a custom linux install boot from cd

[Chuck Peters]

On Sat, Apr 6, 2013 at 8:46 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) <
atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> I've been away from email for a few days, so if anyone sent something
> directly to me, I'll have to get to you shortly.
>
> I need some linux geekery and wizardry extarordinaire.
>
> Let's say I want to create a custom linux install to do some specific
> unique task, like monitoring the weather, be a vpn, or maybe mine bitcoins.
>  So, say I boot a Mint 13 cd and either apt-get or copy programs and
> scripts to get the system working like I want and doing what I want.
>  Actually, I don't understand how you can install anything on a system
> which booted from a cd, but that's another story.


The way it used to work is all changes were stored in RAM, but things have
changed...


> Anyway, assume the system is doing the task that I want.  However, the
> problem is, when I reboot, everything goes away, and I have to configure it
> all over again.  So, how do I change it so that I can save all my changes
> to another cd, and when I boot that one, the system is capable of doing the
> special task I wanted.
>

Knoppix, http://www.knoppix.org/ or latest english version
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/knoppix705-en.html, was
the distribution that popularized LiveCD's and it is based on Debian.  In
older versions it had something setup called persistence which allowed you
to save changes to a thumb drive or floppy or whatever, but I don't recall
it having an option to save it to the CD unless you had a second CD burner.
 Customizing the CD's took some substantial computer resources when I tried
it a few years ago.  At that time it had a patched kernel to gzip the whole
filesystem, and later replaced with squashfs and I don't know what it uses
now...

It appears the process of saving changes has improved quite a bit and they
now offer the program flash-knoppix that should make saving changes much
easier.
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/knoppix705-en.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoppix will explain things better...
http://knoppix.net/ was, and probably still is, a good place to learn more
and ask questions.


> I'm considering booting from a CD and, maybe, not even having a hard
> drive.  That means I don't have to worry much at all about maintenance,
> updates, and security, as long as it'd doing the task I want it to do.
>  Don't have to worry about hard drive failures and power failures either.
>  All the work I want the unit to do is network based.
>

I think hard drive failures compared to CD or thumb drive failures will
leave you a much less reliable system.

Have you searched for a customized LiveCD that does what you want.  Lots of
people have created niche distributions and some are maintained better than
others.   Search via Google for bitcoin mining livecd finds a few
possibilities.


Chuck
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