Building a custom live CD with Fedora’s livecd-creator
ORIGINAL SPIN
Fedora 7 comes with new tools for creating custom live CDs and custom .iso files. We’ll show you how to get started with Fedora's new command-line tool, livecd-creator.
The traditional technique for building a Live CD is to enter a series of commands that create directories to represent the file systems on the finished CD. Then you can manually install the files you need in the appropriate directories, manipulate them as necessary, and assemble the directories into an .iso file, and the .iso is burned onto a CD or DVD. This procedure is often error prone, and if you find you need to make some minor revisions three months down theroad, you must repeat the process.
One solution to the repetition is to write scripts that assemble the files and build the CD. Homegrown scripts, however, add additional complications. Fedora’s new command-line tool, livecd-creator, offers an alternative approach. Live-cd-creator lets you assemble a Live CD using a few simple commands, and you can even use a kickstart .ks configuration file to specifies the contents of the finished CD. Fedora 7 also comes with a GUI-based tool, Revisor (Figure 1), for creating custom .isos and Live CDs, and other similar utilities – such as openSUSE’s Kiwi – are available. This article focuses on how to build a custom LiveCD with livecd-creator.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.