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fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: Snapshot description

Sun Feb 03, 2013 3:52 pm

That's the one (or one of them.)
dzz

- dzz
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- Location: Devon, England

## Re: Snapshot description

Sun Feb 03, 2013 4:23 pm

I stopped using remastersys when grub2 became a dependency, not wanting that imposition. For a while I used older versions hacked for squeeze or made my own scripts.
Later I discovered snapshot, which suited me better anyway as community project with a Debian mind-set (remastersys was/is more ubuntu-orientated), no unnecessary deps and a forum with good open discussion, not restricted to "my product's support forum"
The "dist-mode" there, far as I remember, removes the "user" account then live-config create a new one at bootup (as do official debian-live images) Custom user defaults go in skel.
You can do the same using snapshot, if that's what you want, by (manually) chrooting and modifying the "myfs" directory (deluser) before it gets squashed. Done like that successfully many times here.
You can't support and every user's individual needs but what can be done is make sure it's always possible to override defaults, snapshot.conf already covers a lot. An option to interrupt the process and open a chroot for manual changes might be useful.
@golinux: Snapshot description? Great idea, thanks for volunteering, as most of us here have already a long "TODO" list!
EDIT
Here's another link detailing live image creation :
http://klikit.pbworks.com/w/page/731511 ... s%20Capink
Thanks for the link to Dean's excellent post, I had lost that.
fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: Snapshot description

Sun Feb 03, 2013 4:44 pm

There already is a stop point. Just before 'mksquashfs' you can edit any files in myfs. No chroot needed, unless I'm missing something. To activate that stop point, you set $edit_boot_menu to "yes" in the config file.
There is now also a stop point at the beginning, where you can edit the config file or the excludes, by clicking on the Setup button in the first window. (can't do that in the cli version - anyone using that already knows how to open a file to edit, I would guess.)
golinux

- golinux
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## Re: Snapshot description

Sun Feb 03, 2013 4:45 pm

Keep the thoughts and links coming guys. I'm starting to get an idea of why snapshot was 'born' and why it is a 'better' option etc. FWIW, I too was put off by the 'buntu orientation of remastersys. It's going to take some time to sort through all this. Although I'm good at this type of project, there is going to be a bit of a learning curve. I won't be able to write a coherent description until I totally understand what I'm talking about so please be patient. And at some point I'm going to have to take the plunge and actually give it a try! I've been reading these last months, looked at the config file etc. but not yet had the courage to actually do it. Eventually, I'll get there . . .
dzz

- dzz
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## Re: Snapshot description

Sun Feb 03, 2013 5:53 pm

> Just before 'mksquashfs' you can edit any files in myfs. No chroot needed, unless I'm missing something

deluser, passwd, anything else that's more than a simple file mod, or involves messing with binaries and requires a particular cli tool for. However there is nothing in snapshot preventing a user doing that manually.
meandean

- meandean
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## Re: Snapshot description

Sun Feb 03, 2013 6:23 pm

> golinux wrote:.. but not yet had the courage to actually do it. ...

- no courage need it, just do it
- it doesnt alter your system
- no tweaks to the config are required but are recommended if you have an advanced setup, personally I just run it with the standard excludes as my data is on another partition and is mounted under the already excluded media directory
- the worst that happens is you run out of room on your disk (although I think fsmithred version even checks that and warns you) and have to log in as root and delete the build folder and start over
meandean

- meandean
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## Re: Snapshot description

Sun Feb 03, 2013 7:14 pm

> golinux wrote:That's hardly gonna fill a wikipedia page.

Yea I prefer people take it from there because the possibilities are endless. Well not really endless but fairly open. You can do a clean install with your favorite apps and redistribute to others(the way I use to make refracta itself) or make a exact system backup including all your changes to date, or even stop it at the squash stage and customize it further or or, you could.....etc...etc...etc...
I like to use it nowadays to keep my ever evolving system backed up and ready for a reinstall if I screw something up, or change computers or swap hard drives. I always have my tweaked system ready to go. So far this install has been xfce, gnome shell, lxde, and is now kde4....still snapshot'n and reinstalling although I have also switched computers three times also...

> I'm hoping to collect everything that fsmithred (and others involved) has posted here and there so I can pull it all together into a viable presentation.

good luck with that

> Some history would be good.

...one thing leading to another...used to do a lot of installs....starting from a minimal install got old....live images gave me a quick staring point...extracting and chrooting and tweaking the live image and rebuilding the squash and live image got old real quick(again)....
I had heard of the various remaster tools but for this reason or that none of them interested me much. I did try a couple of them a time or two and while they worked on a different distro I dont think I managed to get any of them to work on real debian. Also they seemed to be a bit complicated to use anyway. Not to mention I suck at coding and already knew that the code for any of those were way beyond me and I knew I had no chance of tweaking it.
As i said, it was really just more of creating various debian builds and getting tired of starting over from scratch.
It also went hand in hand with learning how to 'install' the live image to a hard drive...

> When was the first snapshot released?

Most of this was around 2007 i believe or at least shared with others around that time. I think the first ideas and discussion was at one of my long dead forums and/or the cloudywizzard forum which I do not think is available anymore either.

> Was it based on other code or written from scratch?

I would have to say scratch. I dissected a debian live image to see how it was put together and then worked backwards from there. Once you realize that it is a few files and a squashed filesystem...well...not much magic beyond that except figuring out what to exclude and tweak. Now I am sure the process is not anything original or inventive as plenty of live images existed before then and the rest is just squashing up your filesystem and what to exclude/tweak. As I said, not really magic, just mostly fooling around and having fun rather than sitting down to create some tool.

> How is it different from other cloning options etc. Why is it better?

I am not really for telling someone some thing is 'better' for them than something else, they will have to decide that. I can tell them how it is different. But in this case I do not really know how it is different as I haven't really dug in and looked at any other method although I am sure it is all similar junk.
Last edited by meandean on Mon Feb 04, 2013 1:39 pm, edited 3 times in total.
anticapitalista

- anticapitalista
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- Joined: Wed May 09, 2012 10:49 am

## Re: Snapshot description

Sun Feb 03, 2013 10:23 pm

Only to add that we at antiX use a modified version of the script (we use our own live set up, not Debian live). This script has helped our users immensely.
golinux

- golinux
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## Re: Snapshot description

Tue Feb 05, 2013 6:08 pm

> meandean wrote:

> > golinux wrote:.. but not yet had the courage to actually do it. ...

> - no courage need it, just do it

Well, I did it! ISO was created and booted but I am unable to login. According to the release notes root password is root and the user password is user. No mention of what the user name is but nothing I tried worked. What did I miss?
nadir

- nadir
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## Re: Snapshot description

Tue Feb 05, 2013 6:17 pm

What meandean quoted was about writing an article, not about booting an iso.

> I won't be able to write a coherent description until I totally understand what I'm talking about so please be patient. And at some point I'm going to have to take the plunge and actually give it a try! I've been reading these last months, looked at the config file etc. but not yet had the courage to actually do it.

then he said:

> - no courage need it, just do it

Anyway:
alt+ctrl+F2
login as "user" with password "user" (or login as "root" with password "root", then skip su)
su
etc/init.d/lightdm stop
etc/init.d/lightdm start
If you can now log in as "user" with password "user", then there is a bug (cause i ran in the very same earlier. I didn't pay much notice, as yesterday, on hardware i didn't have that problem. And VirtualBox adds an extra layer of problems).
If that doesn't work, stop ligthdm again and startx as "user"
-
A wiki is a wiki for a reason. Someone starts writing something, then others add. "something" can be adding an empty page and waiting for others to join in. No need to start perfect.
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