KIWI Rocks!!
by cyberorg,
Thursday, April 12th, 2007 @ 9:38 am
Note: The following how-to might be obsolete by now, for more uptodate how-to please refer KIWI.pdf. Here is more recent how-to.
openSUSE KIWI toolkit is fantastic piece of work, congratulations to all the developers involved in creating this software. This is my first encounter with KIWI and I must say it rocks!
With KIWI we can build anything from live CD/DVD, thin client images, xen and other vm images to custom distributions.
Here is a short how to KIWI live, they are the things that I did to create my very first Live distro: XFCE based openSUSE 10.2.
Head to http://en.opensuse.org/LiveDVD
After installing all the required kiwi packages download this tarball. It contains modified configuration for live distro based on openSUSE 10.2. Extract the tarball anywhere, preferably in /usr/share/kiwi.
Change following parameters in config.xml according to your setup:
source path=”/mnt/iso”
Change the path to your installation source, in my case it was openSUSE-10.2 box DVD iso mounted at /mnt/iso.
package name=”whateveryouwant”
opensusePattern name=”whicheveryouwant”
For list of patterns see : http://en.opensuse.org/Patterns
Once you are done with selecting patterns and packages you want for your live distro run this command:
kiwi –root /tmp/mydvd –prepare /usr/share/kiwi/image/kwliveDVD-suse-10.2
Note: there are double hyphens in front of root and prepare)
This will take a while installing everything and will create a tree in /tmp/mydvd.
Edit /tmp/mydvd/etc/inittab to boot at runlevel 3 ( id:3:initdefault:). This was done as xdm does not offer the DE you want to log into and boots into fvwm. I am sure you can make it boot into xfce4, but I have not explored that yet.
You can customize the configuration in /tmp/mydvd as you like, like select default wallpapers, put some files on users desktop (/tmp/mydvd/home/linux/Desktop) etc. Once you are done run this command:
kiwi –create /tmp/mydvd -d /tmp
This will create an iso image /tmp/liveDVD-suse-10.2.i686-1.1.2.iso which you can burn on a disk or run directly using qemu or vmware. If you use qemu, make sure you have kqemu installed too.
qemu -m 256 -cdrom /tmp/liveDVD-suse-10.2.i686-1.1.2.iso -boot d
Once at login prompt login as user:linux, password: linux and run startxfce4
: Samir Joshi, April 13, 2007 @ 9:06 am
Very interesting. I want to know more about the same. Please send me details on my email.
: Rico, April 20, 2007 @ 1:45 am
>Very interesting. I want to know more about the same. Please send me details on my email.
What details!?
: Carlos, June 8, 2007 @ 11:45 pm
Hmmm…tried your example and it doesn’t seem to work.
When running the first script (kiwi –prepare) I get the following error:
Aug-06 15:35 : Setting up package manager: smart done
Aug-06 15:35 : Setting RPM signature check to: False done
Aug-06 15:35 : Adding local smart channel: kiwi1-30803 done
Aug-06 15:35 : Initializing image system on: /tmp/mydvd… done
Aug-06 15:37 : Removing smart channel(s): kiwi1-30803 done
Aug-06 15:37 : Resetting RPM signature check to: True done
Aug-06 15:37 : Including pattern: default done
Aug-06 15:37 : Including pattern: base done
Aug-06 15:37 : Including pattern: console done
Aug-06 15:37 : Including pattern: remote_desktop done
Aug-06 15:37 : Including pattern: x11 done
Aug-06 15:37 : Including pattern: xfce failed
Aug-06 15:37 : Couldn’t create image package list failed
Aug-06 15:37 : Image installation failed failed
After a little investigation I discover that no xfce pattern exists (at least not on openSUSE-10.2-GM-DVD-i386.iso which is what I mounted on /mnt/iso). Check out
/mnt/iso/suse/setup/descr/patterns … in my case no xfce pattern, thus the error.
Did you create your own xfce pattern or does your copy of the DVD iso include this pattern?
BTW, I tried to match your example exactly and used your config.xml (from downloaded tar ball).
: jigish.gohil, June 9, 2007 @ 3:39 am
The image I used is 9 GB Retail DVD, it has xfce pattern, may be I missed mentioning that.
: jigish.gohil, June 9, 2007 @ 3:40 am
“openSUSE-10.2 box DVD” There it was
: suseuser, June 17, 2007 @ 10:40 pm
The question is, does this program make it easy to create, let´s say a live CD with all codecs and media-players and plug-ins ? For personal use of course.
I think it would be great if sb made a youtube video of this..
: jigish.gohil, June 18, 2007 @ 2:40 pm
@suseuser:
Yes that is the idea, you can spin your own version of SUSE including all the stuff that you think should be in there.
: German Man, June 19, 2007 @ 9:55 am
Whe I run this kiwi –create /tmp/mydvd -d /tmp then I have error
ron:/usr/share/kiwi # kiwi –create /tmp/mydvd -d /tmp
Jun-19 10:50 : Reading image description… done
Jun-19 10:50 : Setting up root log on: /tmp/mydvd/screenrc.log… done
Jun-19 10:50 : iso:isoboot/suse-10.2,compressed: No boot image specified failed
Jun-19 10:50 : Logfile available at: /tmp/mydvd.log done
Jun-19 10:50 : KIWI exited with error(s) done
Have you answer?
: jigish.gohil, June 19, 2007 @ 10:34 am
what is the output of :
kiwi –root /tmp/mydvd –prepare /usr/share/kiwi/image/kwliveDVD-suse-10.2
: German Man, June 19, 2007 @ 11:24 am
celeron:/tmp # kiwi -root /tmp/mydvd -prepare /usr/share/kiwi/image/kwliveDVD-suse-10.2
Jun-19 12:08 : Reading image description… done
Jun-19 12:08 : Setting up root log on: /tmp/mydvd/screenrc.log… done
Jun-19 12:08 : Setting up package manager: smart done
Jun-19 12:08 : Setting RPM signature check to: False done
Jun-19 12:08 : Adding local smart channel: kiwi1-7717 done
Jun-19 12:08 : Initializing image system on: /tmp/mydvd… done
Jun-19 12:12 : Removing smart channel(s): kiwi1-7717 done
Jun-19 12:12 : Resetting RPM signature check to: False done
Jun-19 12:12 : Including pattern: default done
Jun-19 12:12 : Including pattern: base done
Jun-19 12:12 : Including pattern: console done
Jun-19 12:12 : Including pattern: remote_desktop done
Jun-19 12:12 : Including pattern: x11 done
Jun-19 12:12 : –> Including required pattern: sw_management_pattern failed
Jun-19 12:12 : Couldn’t find required pattern: sw_management_pattern skipped
Jun-19 12:12 : –> Including required pattern: yast2_basis done
Jun-19 12:12 : –> Including required pattern: fonts done
Jun-19 12:12 : Mounting required file systems done
Jun-19 12:12 : Mounting local channel: kiwi1-7717 skipped
Jun-19 12:12 : Couldn’t mount read-only, using bind mount done
Jun-19 12:12 : Setting RPM signature check to: False done
Jun-19 12:12 : Adding image smart channel: kiwi1-7717 done
Jun-19 12:12 : Installing image packages… done
Jun-19 12:24 : Copying user defined files to image tree done
Jun-19 12:24 : Create .profile for package scripts done
Jun-19 12:24 : Calling image script: config.sh done
Jun-19 12:25 : Adding user: linux [users] done
Jun-19 12:25 : Creating in-place SVN repository… done
Jun-19 12:26 : Logfile available at: /tmp/mydvd.log done
Jun-19 12:26 : KIWI exited successfully done
celeron:/tmp #
: jigish.gohil, June 19, 2007 @ 11:30 am
are you using openSUSE 10.2 box DVD ? everything in first command looks alright to me except for sw_management pattern.
May be you can visit IRC #opensuse-kiwi and ask there, someone else might be able to point the problem.
Also config.xml mentioned in this post might be obsoleted by now.
: German Man, June 19, 2007 @ 11:49 am
I Have openSUSE-10.2-GM-DVD-i386.
My config.xml you see here
CyberOrg Info
cyberorg@cyberorg.info
openSUSE 10.2 LiveDVD System
iso:isoboot/suse-10.2,compressed
1.1.2
2700
smart
False
True
–>
: German Man, June 19, 2007 @ 11:50 am
oh shit, you can not see the config.xml , sorry