• How Do You Create ISOs?

    From Ricardo Romanach@21:1/5 to All on Fri Mar 17 19:40:01 2023
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    To whom it may concern in the Debian team,
    I have a question about creating ISOs. I am currently attempting to create an ISO file from an existing Debian 11 installation. I want to do this in order to more easily share this customized copy with a few friends. However, I have not found a tool that
    allows me to properly create an ISO specifically with the ext4 filesystem. My question is this: what tools does your team use to create your ISO distributions? Also, how would I go about creating an ISO or tar.gz that contains a preinstalled version of
    Debian and allows me to extract it to a USB drive in a bootable state?
    I don’t know if my understanding of ISOs is correct, but know this must be possible.

    I have tried using tar to zip the drive’s contents, but after extracting them to the target USB drive, I get an “operating system not found” error, even though the files appear the same. Maybe some symbolic links or hidden files didn’t make it
    through?
    I tried partclone.ext4 but the iso file was not usable and it did not create a usable partition when I tried to write it to a drive.
    Similarly, clonezilla’s “recover-iso-zip” option only creates another clonezilla installation and not an ISO containing the original files themselves.
    I have tried dd many times, however this will only create a massive ISO with the same size as the drive, even when using the sparse flag on this command or when piping it through to a cp command with sparse=always.
    I have also tried mkisofs/genisoimage but these also create ISOs that do not write in a usable manner to the USB disk.
    e2image makes massive images, even when piped to a sparse cp command.
    Various other utilities like gnome disks will also create massive ISOs.
    Tools like Brasero and K3B and a couple others cannot accept hidden files when creating an ISO, Cubic is for ubuntu, and I don’t know how to use Linux Live Kit since there are very few guides on how to use it properly or how to handle errors when they
    appear.

    Please let me know how you think I should approach this problem of creating an ISO from an existing installed system and writing it to a disk. Any ISO expertise would be greatly appreciated! I thought it would be a good idea to directly ask those
    involved with ISO creation on the Debian team!

    Thanks,
    Ricardo Romanach
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    <html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">To whom it may concern in the Debian team,<div>I have a question about creating ISOs. I am currently attempting to create an ISO file from an existing
    Debian 11 installation. I want to do this in order to more easily share this customized copy with a few friends. However, I have not found a tool that allows me to properly create an ISO specifically with the ext4 filesystem. My question is this: what
    tools does your team use to create your ISO distributions? Also, how would I go about creating an ISO or tar.gz that contains a <i>preinstalled</i> version of Debian and allows me to extract it to a USB drive in a bootable state?</div><div>I don’t know
    if my understanding of ISOs is correct, but know this must be possible.</div><div><br></div><div>I have tried using <b>tar</b> to zip the drive’s contents, but after extracting them to the target USB drive, I get an “operating system not found”
    error, even though the files appear the same. Maybe some symbolic links or hidden files didn’t make it through?</div><div>I tried <b>partclone.ext4</b> but the iso file was not usable and it did not create a usable partition when I tried to write it to
    a drive.</div><div>Similarly, <b>clonezilla</b>’s “recover-iso-zip” option only creates another clonezilla installation and not an ISO containing the original files themselves.</div><div>I have tried <b>dd </b>many times, however this will only
    create a massive ISO with the same size as the drive, even when using the sparse flag on this command or when piping it through to a cp command with sparse=always.</div><div>I have also tried <b>mkisofs/genisoimage</b> but these also create ISOs that do
    not write in a usable manner to the USB disk.</div><div><b>e2image</b>&nbsp;makes massive images, even when piped to a sparse cp command.</div><div>Various other utilities like <b>gnome disks </b>will also create massive ISOs.</div><div>Tools like <b>
    Brasero&nbsp;</b>and <b>K3B&nbsp;</b>and a couple others cannot accept hidden files when creating an ISO, <b>Cubic</b>&nbsp;is for ubuntu, and I don’t know how to use <b>Linux Live Kit</b> since there are very few guides on how to use it properly or
    how to handle errors when they appear.</div><div><b><br></b></div><div>Please let me know how you think I should approach this problem of creating an ISO from an existing installed system and writing it to a disk. Any ISO expertise would be greatly
    appreciated! I thought it would be a good idea to directly ask those involved with ISO creation on the Debian team!</div><div><br></div><div>Thanks,</div><div>Ricardo Romanach</div></body></html>
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  • From Richard Owlett@21:1/5 to Ricardo Romanach on Sat Mar 18 12:40:01 2023
    I believe debian-user@lists.debian.org would be more fruitful for your underlying goal(s).

    Ricardo Romanach wrote:
    To whom it may concern in the Debian team,
    I have a question about creating ISOs. I am currently attempting to
    create an ISO file from an existing Debian 11 installation. I want to do
    this in order to more easily share this customized copy with a few
    friends.
    *SNIP*
    *
    Please let me know how you think I should approach this problem of
    creating an ISO from an existing installed system and writing it to a
    disk. Any ISO expertise would be greatly appreciated! I thought it would
    be a good idea to directly ask those involved with ISO creation on the
    Debian team!

    I've seen discussion of custom "Live CD's".
    Might that serve your underlying purpose?
    HTH




    Thanks,
    Ricardo Romanach

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  • From Thomas Schmitt@21:1/5 to Ricardo Romanach on Sat Mar 18 20:30:01 2023
    Hi,

    Ricardo Romanach wrote:
    I am currently attempting to create an ISO file from an existing
    Debian 11 installation.

    Google found me
    https://github.com/pieroproietti/penguins-eggs
    "penguins-eggs is a console utility, under continuous development,
    that allows you to remaster your system and redistribute it as iso
    images."

    I could not find out by which program the "ISO" is packed up and whether
    it is indeed an ISO 9660 filesystem image or some other image which only
    gets called "ISO".


    I have not found a tool that
    allows me to properly create an ISO specifically with the ext4 filesystem.

    You use the term obviously for any kind of filesystem image.
    Debian ISOs are mainly ISO 9660 filesystem images, i.e. read-only, capable
    of booting from optical media, readable by about any operating system
    (with possibly somewhat dull file names).


    what tools does your team use to create your ISO distributions?

    This mailing list is about package "debian-cd"
    https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debian-cd
    https://packages.debian.org/unstable/debian-cd
    "Tools for building (Official) Debian CD set"

    But this package does not create an ISO image so that it is much like the system on which it produces the image. It rather composes the image
    content from Debian package files (.udeb and .deb) and some base software
    to give it enough brain to start up, to interact with the user, and to
    install the Debian packages to a hard disk (which may be a USB stick).
    Very much unlike an installed Debian system.


    I don’t know if my understanding of ISOs is correct, but know this must be possible.

    Possible: Yes.
    Already done and offered: Maybe.
    Offered or used by Debian: Not that i am aware.


    tar ... partclone.ext4 ... dd ... e2image ...

    Even if you pack up the whole hard disk, it is not guaranteed that copying
    the result to another computer's hard disk will work. The packed up system files might be too much addicted to the hardware of the original computer.

    Bootable ISO 9660 images are in most cases prepared to be not specialized
    to a particular configuration of hardware. One may expect them to work
    with a wide range of machines, if only the processor type matches.


    I don’t know how to use Linux Live Kit since there are very few guides
    on how to use it properly or how to handle errors when they appear.

    Nevertheless it promises to do what you desire.
    So it seems worth to invest time in learning how to use it.


    Have a nice day :)

    Thomas

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