Introduction

When creating offline installation media for an automated installation of Lubuntu OS 14.04 using preseed , I was faced with the fact that I need to add packages to the installation media that are missing from the original alternate distribution . I tried many different ways to create my own autonomous distributions, but they turned out to be:

• or inappropriate ( LiveCDCustomization ), because I do not need a LiveCD, but an installation preseed distribution;
• either very complex ( DebianCustomCD );
• either worked, not as expected ( Simple-CDD , DebianInstaller / Modify / CD ), or maybe I didn’t figure it out.

As a result, I stopped at the method described in the Ubuntu community .



I want to talk about what I did.

Training

To supplement the distribution, we need the original alternate distribution , to which we will add packages. As well as a computer running Ubuntu or Lubuntu, on which we will do it.

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Creating a directory structure and copying files

Create a directory in which we will work with this distribution:

mkdir -p /opt/cd-image 

Download the distribution:

 wget http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/trusty/release/lubuntu-14.04.1-alternate-i386.iso 

Unzip the downloaded iso-image:

 mkdir /mnt/iso mount -o loop lubuntu-14.04.1-alternate-i386.iso /mnt/iso cp -rT /mnt/iso /opt/cd-image umount /mnt/iso 

Create a directory for the packages we want to add to the distribution:

 mkdir -p /opt/cd-image/pool/extras 

Preparation of encryption keys

If you do not have a public-private key pair, you will need to create it with gpg . The key is desirable to set a comment like "XXX Signing Key".





We will use the private key to sign the release files of the repository. For the following steps, you will need the fakeroot package, install it if it is not on your system.

Copying files to the repository

You can simply add several packages manually to the / opt / cd-image / pool / extras directory.



If you need to update the installer kernel modules, you can do this by:

 cd /opt/cd-image/pool/main/l/linux/ wget -r -nd --no-parent --accept '*-modules-3.13.0-24*i386.udeb' ftp://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/l/linux/ 

where instead of 3.13.0-24 * i386, you can specify the desired version of the kernel that you use to boot, and the architecture of the modules.



To download all the packages installed in the current OS on the reference computer, you can do this





And add the downloaded packages from the apt cache to the repository.

Creating a standalone local repository using apt-ftparchive

The apt-ftparchive utility is contained in the apt-utils package.

All settings are given for Lubuntu 14.04 Trusty and i386 architecture. If the version or architecture of your distribution is different, then you need to correct the corresponding values ​​in the configuration files and scripts.

Repository description for apt-ftparchive

In the / opt / apt-ftparchive directory you need to create the following configuration files:



Settings for main and universe pockets:





Settings for debian-installer installer modules in main and universe pockets:

Settings for our pocket extras:

Settings for creating a release repository file:

Index loading

Creating Packages and Release repository files

The script that starts the creation of Packages and Release files of the repository with the apt-ftparchive utility, taking into account our settings, and then signs the Release file and writes the checksums of the files in md5sum.txt:

Creating and using an ISO image

Creating an ISO image

Boot from ISO

Now you can boot using the created ISO image, burn the image to a CD / DVD-ROM, or from removable media.

Creating a bootable USB drive

For the boot, you need to format the disk in FAT32. Install a bootloader on disk, for example grub2:

 sudo grub-install --no-floppy --root-directory=/media/multiboot /dev/sdb 

where / media / multiboot is the path to the mounted partition on the bootable USB disk; / dev / sdb - boot disk device.



After that, configure the bootloader. Approximate grub2 config:





You also need to add vmlinuz and initrd to the root of the USB disk.



In the udeb.list file you can find out the versions of modules that are required by the kernel and which need to be placed in the distribution (see above).



It remains to boot from the created disk, and run the OS installation.