Creating Custom Ubuntu Live-CD With Remastersys

Remastersys is a tool that can be used to do 2 things with an existing Klikit or Ubuntu or derivative installation.It can make a full system backup including personal data to a live cd or dvd that you can use anywhere and install. It can make a distributable copy you can share with friends. This will not have any of your personal user data in it.

Install Remastersys in Ubuntu

The Remastersys repository needs to be added to your /etc/apt/sources.list

sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

Paste the following into the sources.list:

# Remastersys
deb http://www.remastersys.klikit-linux.com/repository remastersys/

Save and exit the file.

Update the source list using the following command

sudo apt-get update

Install remastersys using the following command

sudo apt-get install remastersys

This will complete the installation

Using Remastersys

In order to learn how you can use remastersys, run

sudo remastersys

remastersys Syntax

sudo remastersys backup|clean|dist [cdfs|iso] [filename.iso]

remastersys Examples

1) to make a livecd/dvd backup of your system

sudo remastersys backup

2) to make a livecd/dvd backup and call the iso custom.iso

sudo remastersys backup custom.iso

3) to clean up temporary files of remastersys

sudo remastersys clean

4) to make a distributable livecd/dvd of your system

sudo remastersys dist

5) to make a distributable livecd/dvd filesystem only

sudo remastersys dist cdfs

6) to make a distributable iso named custom.iso but only if the cdfs is already present

sudo remastersys dist iso custom.iso

cdfs and iso options should only be used if you wish to modify something on the cd before the iso is created. An example of this would be to modify the isolinux portion of the livecd/dvd

Creating An ISO Image

To create an iso image of your installation, simply run

sudo remastersys dist

This will create an iso image called customdist.iso in the /home/remastersys directory. The dist option makes that your personal folder (e.g. /home/ruchi) will not be included in the iso image. You might have to insert your Ubuntu installation CD during the process.

This is how the end of the process looks:

[...]
92.16% done, estimate finish Wed DEC 28 15:31:25 2007
93.39% done, estimate finish Wed DEC 28 15:31:25 2007
94.62% done, estimate finish Wed DEC 28 15:31:24 2007
95.85% done, estimate finish Wed DEC 28 15:31:24 2007
97.08% done, estimate finish Wed DEC 28 15:31:25 2007
98.31% done, estimate finish Wed DEC 28 15:31:25 2007
99.54% done, estimate finish Wed DEC 28 15:31:25 2007
Total translation table size: 2048
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 3950
Total directory bytes: 9094
Path table size(bytes): 54
Max brk space used 0
406890 extents written (794 MB)

/home/remastersys/customdist.iso is ready to be burned or tested in a virtual machine.

Check the size and if it is larger than 700MB you will need to burn it to a dvd

796M /home/remastersys/customdist.iso

Clean Up

After you’ve burnt the iso image onto a CD/DVD, you can run

sudo remastersys clean

to remove all temporary file created during the iso generation as well as the /home/remastersys directory.