Is there a traditional remaster howto out there?

[Member JohnA]

Hi,

I would like to do a remaster of antiX from a traditional method of working on the iso mounted and extracted to my hard drive instead of the more convenient live-remaster. The reason why I want to do it this way is because I want to experiment with a lot of modifications and the process will take a long time. I would like to be able to work on it over multiple days then re-bundle my modifications into a new ise.

The way I am planning to do this is first install antiX to a hard drive, then from that environment also download the same iso and extract the content into a sub-directory. I would like to then make my changes (lots of experimenting and ideas) then build a new iso and give it a spin.

Is there any kind of antiX specific documentation out there for this type of remastering?

Thank you so much,
John

[Member techore]

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In reading your post, I would recommend changing your approach.

1. Install the version of antiX that most closely matches your ideal remastered antiX
2. Install and remove packages, edit configuration files, etc.
3. Use ‘iso-snapshot’ from your current installation to generate an ISO of your current installation

One of several reasons I stay with antiX is the awesome build tools anticapitalista and others have created to customize antiX.

I have archived this repo but it provides details on how I created the antix-dwm 22 spin.

https://gitlab.com/techore/antix-dwm/-/blob/b99c80a1475e2299ae69d07aeaacedddbc94720c/doc/build.md

[Member JohnA]

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Hello Techore,

Thank you for your reply. This approach does sound simpler, but I have a few questions. I would like to avoid the bloat of all the cache and files I accumulate in the remaster process (such as Apt cache and my build files for applications I want to install). Does the iso-snapshot trim down to a more pristine file structure when used? Also, somewhat related, does the iso-snapshot retain the general configuration where the install would not be hardware specific, or does it compile the iso and keep all the hardware specific modules used on the build computer? I would very much like to keep the hardware detection in place.

Thank you!

[Member techore]

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There is no one right answer, but a couple ideas come to mind.

Clean apt cache.

sudo apt-get clean

Also, keep everything in a user directory when building–leave root out of it so it can be deleted before finalizing. EDIT: and use a git repository so you don’t lose your freaking mind by accidentally nuking stuff and losing hours/days of work. _yeah_ Been there. Done that.

You can also pass args to iso-snapshot reducing some of the cruft.

iso-snapshot -c -r -x Desktop -x Documents -x Downloads -x Music -x Networks -x Pictures -x Steam -x Videos -x Virtualbox -f "$isoname"

Check iso-snapshot for a man page or -h/–help. There are bound to be options that I don’t remember.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by techore.

[Member abc-nix]

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JohnA wrote:

Does the iso-snapshot trim down to a more pristine file structure when used?

Check the exclude list and edit it to exclude files and folders you don’t want included in your snapshot. The exclude file is located in /etc/iso-snapshot-exclude.list
apt cache is already excluded when creating a snapshot. Check the mentioned list.

[Member JohnA]

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Great information folks, thank you very much!

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