Live Kit Improved.

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This set of scripts will help you to
build your own Live Kit distro. This project is based on
the original Linux Live Kit.

You will need to have the following installed:

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• squashfs-tools
• genisoimage / mkisofs (optional)
• zip

Before you build:

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• Store Linux Live Kit in a directory which is not going to be included in your result distro, or else it would be copied to it. The best practice is to make a directory such as for ex.: '/tmp/a', and put all the files there.

  NOTE:

  Make sure to extract and use it on a POSIX-compatible filesystem (for ex: EXT4), since it will create symlinks and such that might not be compatible in for example: FAT and such other filesystems.

• Before you start building your Live Kit, please consider editing the ./.config file, and tweak it to suit your needs. Most importantly, change the LIVEKITNAME variable.

• Make sure that the following scripts are executable:

  • ./build
  • ./livekitlib
  • ./initramfs/init (really important, else the kernel will panic!)
  • ./initramfs/gen-initramfs (it is supposed to be executable :P)

• Make sure you are pointing to the right kernel. If in doubt, change the path in '.config'. Your kernel must support both SquashFS and {AUFS || OverlayFS}, or else you will get an error both while building, and when you actually boot your Live Kit system.

  PROTIP:

  • On most Linux distro-s, the kernel is in /vmlinuz, a symlink to /boot/vmlinuz-* or even /boot/vmlinux-*

  • Debian Jessie's kernel supports both AUFS and SquashFS out-of-the-box. It's recommended to use Debian Jessie as the base OS, but the choice is yours.

  • If you don't need AUFS, or you are just too lazy to compile a custom kernel, then go with OverlayFS. It's supported in most Linux distros (except Debian), and even custom Linux systems that are built around a kernel that have OverlayFS enabled.

• It's recommended to replace boot background in bootfiles/bootpic.png and edit syslinux.cfg to fit your needs.

  NOTE:

  • When editing the configuration file, make sure to keep all paths pointing to /boot/, since it will be replaced to /LIVEKITNAME/boot/ during the build session.

• Linux Live Kit comes with precompiled static binaries in ./initramfs directory. Those may be outdated but will work. You may replace them by your own statically linked binaries, if you know how to compile them.

• If you want to boot your Live Kit from a CD, you'll need to recompile syslinux.bin and/or isolinux.bin else it won't be able to boot your Live Kit from directory "/LIVEKITNAME".

  There is a script prepared for you which will do all of the building. Simply go to directory ./tools/ and run isolinux.bin-update, it will rebuild isolinux.bin automatically by downloading SysLinux sources, patching them using your actual LIVEKITNAME and recompiling. This step is not needed if you only need the ZIP archive version.

• If you have tmpfs mounted on /tmp, make sure you have enough (or maybe even a lot of) RAM, since Live Kit will store lots of data to the target. If you don't have enough (or even went out of) RAM, make sure that /tmp is a regular on-disk directory.

• If you want to include your own bundules, then the 'include_bund/' directory might come in handy. Just make sure that the file extension will match with your chosen .BEXT extension.

When you're ready, run the build script to build your Live Kit system.

The script will automatically:

• Parse .config to suit your needs
• Configure 'livekitlib' according to .config
• Do all the hard work for you
• Will automatically check for errors
• Will warn you if you don't have the correct programs installed