[Cialug] Custom distro CD's

Tue Jan 30 14:20:43 CST 2007

1 - I'd assume so :)

2 - Yup, it's easier to use packages than building from source every
time.

3 - I dunno, the biggest drawback I find with packages is that it
sometimes takes several weeks (from what I can tell) to get the latest
version of SpamAssassin and ClamAV.  Building from source (make/make
install) I can put it up live the day it's released.  Currently it's all
done by hand, but I think I could automate it.

As far as security goes, these systems sit behind a load-balancing
firewall, with only port 783 (SpamAssassin) available.  The firewall
only accepts requests from our local subnet, so I can't see any huge
security risks by using source, but I suppose if I want to distribute
this to the masses, there's bound to be people who don't put it behind
firewalls, etc.

My biggest concern is learning the structure of a new system.  I've
heard arguments for Debian, FreeBSD, CentOS (here), RedHat, Unbutu, etc.
I guess it really doesn't matter to me which one I use, as it'll be
stripped down to bare essentials (ssh client, perl, SpamAssassin,
ClamAV).  From what I can tell, any of those distro's would work for me,
and they should all be relatively similar when they're stripped down,
but I haven't played with them enough to know.

Also - a lot of the stuff that I've been reading through deals with gui
interfaces for creating these CD's.  I've not installed a GUI based
linux distro since Lindows about 6 years ago, so I've no clue as to how
to go about doing that.  My skill level is pretty basic as far as linux
goes.  Most of my experience as of late is dealing with a minimal
installation of FreeBSD, and command line installation of all of the
needed components of our Spam/Anti-virus combination.  I could probably
use some help just getting a system set up with a GUI (if I need it to
run these tools) and getting all of the necessary tools installed to
create this CD.

Anyway, thanks for all of your guys' comments, if anyone wants to
volunteer an evening to educate me on some of my shortcomings, I'd
surely welcome it, but at this point, I think I need to start doing some
reading, and figure out what distro I'd like to try and use, and if I'm
going to use source or some other package manager for
installing/updating stuff.

Matt Breitbach

-----Original Message-----
From: cialug-bounces at cialug.org [mailto:cialug-bounces at cialug.org] On
Behalf Of Josh More
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 10:20 AM
To: 'Central Iowa Linux Users Group'
Subject: RE: [Cialug] Custom distro CD's

Frankly, it's best to learn the paradigm of what you're rebuilding,
otherwise you're creating a support nightmare for yourself in the
future.  You can do a source-file distribution if you want, using Linux
>From Scratch, but stop for a moment and ask yourself these questions:

1) Are the people who run Red Hat, SUSE, Mandriva, Debian, and Ubuntu
intelligent?
2) Is there a reason that every single one of the major players uses
some form of packaging?
3) Do those reasons apply to your project?

Given what you're doing, I'd do a simplified CentOS install.  It'll be
free, reasonably supported for the future, and fairly easy to do.  The
only hard part would be turning some of those perl modules into RPMs,
but these links will help:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cpan2rpm/
http://weidner.in-bad-schmiedeberg.de/computer/linux/rpm/cpanflute.html

See, if you go with a CentOS system, you can leave the default yum
configs in place, and add one of your own to handle your custom stuff. 
Then the systems can stay secure with a minimum of effort on your part. 
If you go with source files, than security updates require you rolling
new CDs for every update.  The CentOS guys on #centos on freenode are
also quite helpful.

-- 
-Josh More, RHCE, CISSP, NCLP 
 morej at alliancetechnologies.net 
 515-245-7701

>>> "Matt" <cialug at flash.shanje.com> 01/30/07 10:01 AM >>> 
Is there any chance that there are easy ways to do it using CVS, or
just
source files?  The specialized distro CD that I'm trying to build will
basically be perl, some perl modules, SpamAssassin (SpamD) and ClamAV
(ClamD).  All I'm doing is SPAM filtering with these systems, and I
want
an easy way to rebuild or deploy new boxes.  I'd also like to
eventually
release this to the internet at large for people to download and use
at
their leisure.  SpamAssassin seems to work best under *nix, so that's
why I'm doing it this way, but setting up and configuring a system to
do
that and only that is more than many people are capable of.  Figured
this would be a nice treat for them.

Also -  any chance that anyone would be willing to sit down for a
couple
of hours and help me poke at this?  Like I said previously, I'm not
super well versed in the *nix world, and a few hours of pointers would
go a long way to helping this get off the ground.  Case of beer, cash,
or other prizes would be offered :)

- Matt

PS -  in any event, thanks for the link -  the stuff I've found for
FreeBSD is cryptic enough that I still haven't really been able to
make
heads or tails of it.  Those tips are already a better start for some
of
these other distro's than what I've got for FreeBSD.

----- Original Message-----
From: cialug- bounces at cialug.org [mailto:cialug- bounces at cialug.org]
On
Behalf Of Josh More
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 9:52 AM
To: cialug at cialug.org
Subject: Re: [Cialug] Custom distro CD's

I did this a few years ago in the Red Hat world. There, it was pretty
simple.  I used RH9 (later, CentOS) as a base.

The build was pretty.  You start with this:  
http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/howto.html and tweak as you go.

If I recall, you need to rebuild your packages as RPMs, build the
appropriate file structure, rebuild comps.xml, repackage everything,
adjust the installer as needed.  For mine, I mostly stripped out
unneeded stuff to shrink it down to a single CD.  Then I added some
things from RPMForge, and modified the kickstart file to do a complete
and automated install.

I've also hacked on Knoppix, which is pretty easy.  There are loads of
resources in google.  "rebuilding knoppix" are good keywords.

You can also make a custom distro based on SUSE pretty easily.  Your
keyword there is "autoyast".

The best advice I can give is that, whatever you choose as a base,
work
within that paradigm.  In other worlds, if you're forking RedHat or
SUSE, make sure everything is an RPM and use kickstart/autoyast.  If
you're forking a debian- based system, use .deb files.  If you're
forking
Gentoo, be sure to have a few books to read as you compile.

*grin*

Hope this helps,

--  
- Josh More, RHCE, CISSP, NCLP 
 morej at alliancetechnologies.net 
 515- 245- 7701

>>> "Matt" <cialug at flash.shanje.com> 01/30/07 9:42 AM >>> 
Does anyone have any clue how to build them?  I've got a project that
I'm working on, and while I'm decent at using *nix (FreeBSD right now)
I'm not well enough versed to really know how to go about making a
_very_ custom distro CD.  Does anyone have any good resources for
making
CD's, or would anyone have time to help a *nix newbie figure this out?

-  Matt Breitbach

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