How to build the ConnochaetOS ISO

The ConnochaetOS ISO consists of several parts

• Directory /arch with connochaetos.txt
• Directory /boot with subdirs grub and isolinux
• Directory /os with a tarball of the root file system

All directories are available at http://www.connochaetos.org/misc/isobuild/iso. I suggest you create a directory /ISO an put all files there. It should look like this

[root@connochaetos ISO]# ls -lR
:
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 16  2010 arch
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Oct 16  2010 boot
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 2048 Oct 15  2010 boot.catalog
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 25 16:03 os

./arch:
total 24
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 23481 Oct 16  2010 connochaetos.txt

./boot:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun  1 08:38 grub
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 25 10:37 isolinux

./boot/grub:
total 324
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   7804 Aug  5  2009 e2fs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   7356 Aug  5  2009 fat_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   6636 Aug  5  2009 ffs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   6628 Aug  5  2009 iso9660_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   8216 Aug  5  2009 jfs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    280 Jun  1 08:38 menu.lst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   6860 Aug  5  2009 minix_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   9260 Aug  5  2009 reiserfs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   4201 Oct 16  2010 splashconnos.xpm.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    512 Aug  5  2009 stage1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 106812 Aug  5  2009 stage2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 106812 Jun  1 08:39 stage2_eltorito
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   6892 Aug  5  2009 ufs2_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   6236 Aug  5  2009 vstafs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   9052 Aug  5  2009 xfs_stage1_5

./boot/isolinux:
total 9732
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     555 Oct 15  2010 boot.msg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8580044 Jun  4 21:10 initrd.img
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   24576 Oct 15  2010 isolinux.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     130 Oct 15  2010 isolinux.cfg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     343 Oct 15  2010 options.msg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1346432 May 25 12:16 vmlinuz

./os:
total 0

The initrd is in fact the “live” root filesystem from where the installation is started. It is constructed with mkinitcpio. Hint archboot-connos must be installed to build the initrd.

1. Get c.conf from http://www.connochaetos.org/misc/isobuild/mkinitcpio/c.conf
2. execute mkinitcpio -c c.conf -k 2.6.32-libre-lts -g initrd.img
3. put the generated initrd.img in /ISO/boot/isolinux, overwrite an existing initrd.img
4. put the corresponding kernel image in the same directory and name it vmlinuz

The root file system contains the following packages listed at http://www.connochaetos.org/misc/isobuild/iso-root-fs.txt For example

• mkdir /ISOROOT
• mkdir -p /ISOROOT/var/lib/pacman/
• Install all packages listed in iso-root-fs.txt with pacman under/ISOROOT using the -r switch.
• cd /ISOROOT
• tar -cvzpf /tmp/connos.tar.gz .
• Move /tmp/connos.tar.gz to the directory /ISO/os
• cd /ISO/os
• tar -tzf connos.tar.gz >connos.tar.gz.files

Finally, when all files are in place you can build the ISO image with the command

mkisofs -RlDJLV connochaetos -b boot/grub/stage2_eltorito -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o /tmp/connos.iso .

The ISO image will be created at /tmp/connos.iso