Features
Customizer includes useful features for remastering the ISO images. Users with some knowledge would find these features to be sufficient.
Contents
A. Main
B. Extra
C. Settings
E. Limitations
In «Main» tab, click «Select ISO» button, choose an ISO image and click «Open» button to extract the image. Else, edit line 19 in /etc/customizer.conf in a text editor as root, save and close the file, then run sudo customizer -e in host Terminal. This may take a minute or more.
In «Main» tab, edit the text fields by changing the name to another name of choice.
-
Live user: the username for the Live CD session (line 5)
-
Hostname: the hostname for the Live CD session (line 7)
Else, edit the corresponding lines in $WORKDIR/FileSystem/etc/casper.conf file using a text editor as root, then save and close the file.
Avoid spaces. Use only lowercase characters (a-z) for best compatibility.
In «Main» tab, click one button at a time to use the feature.
-
«Edit sources» button will open
sources.listfile in a text editor as root. When making changes, the file must be saved then closed. Else, target file can be accessed at$WORKDIR/FileSystem/etc/apt/sources.listvia host Terminal. -
«Terminal» button will open the chroot Terminal. Else, run
sudo customizer -cin the host Terminal. -
«Archive» button will run package manager found on ISO image, usually
synaptic. Else, runsudo customizer -pin the host Terminal. -
«Desktop» button will run graphical Desktop in a X-nested session via Xephyr. Else, run
sudo customizer -xin the host Terminal. -
«Install DEB» button will open a selection dialog window to choose target package (
*.deb). Else, edit line 20 in/etc/customizer.conffile using a text editor, save and close the file, then runsudo customizer -din the host Terminal. -
«Execute hook» button will open a selection dialog window to choose target script (
*.shor such). Else, edit line 21 in/etc/customizer.conffile using a text editor, save and close the file, then runsudo customizer -kin the host Terminal.
Running apt-get update in the chroot Terminal will update database in the remix and not the host system. When running chroot Terminal, user will see :/# instead of :~$ in command prompt.
* Chrooting...
=> Checking
=> Chrooting
root@hostname:/#
The «Archive» button will be enabled if package manager is installed. Similarly, «Desktop» button will be enabled if at least one X environment is installed.
In «Main» tab, click «Rebuild ISO» button to rebuild existing work into a new ISO image. Else, run sudo customizer -r in the host Terminal.
Any existing image will be removed, before a new one is created. The image will be created at $WORKDIR as root. User can create a copy of the image in other location for backup purpose.
Prior to rebuilding a new ISO image, user has additional option to exclude files (See D.1.).
In «Main» tab, click «QEMU» button to test run the new ISO image in QEMU virtual machine. Else, run sudo customizer -q in the host Terminal.
This action will run QEMU using virtual memory that is specified in «Settings» tab of Customizer. KVM is enabled automatically if the host machine supports virtualization.
QEMU will run mostly using default parameters, which is expected to always work. However, this also means QEMU might not be optimized for running a "decent" environment.
The «QEMU» button will be enabled, after a new ISO image has been created by «Rebuild ISO».
In «Main» tab, click «Clean» button to delete existing work. Else, run sudo customizer -t in the host Terminal.
Anyway, this action will not delete the ISO image at $WORKDIR. User must manually delete the image as root.
In «Extra» tab, click «Browse FileSystem» button to open FileSystem directory in the file manager as root. Else, target directory can be accessed at $WORKDIR/FileSystem via host Terminal.
In «Extra» tab, click «Browse ISO» button to open ISO directory in the file manager as root. Else, target directory can be accessed at $WORKDIR/ISO via host Terminal.
In «Settings» tab, view or change the settings for the work directory, locales, X-nest resolution, QEMU RAM (in MB) and SquashFS compression format. Any changes made will be saved in /etc/customizer.conf file. Else, edit using a text editor from the host system.
The working directory $WORKDIR refers to /home directory by default.
D. Hidden features
For additional option, edit /usr/share/customizer/exclude.list file. When user rebuilds ISO, Customizer will delete the files according to this listing.
Even Customizer GUI is closed, existing work will remain unchanged as long as «Clean» button is not clicked. The user can continue from last time immediately at next run.
The faster way to replace current ISO image is to use «Select ISO» button directly. This is equivalent to this order of steps: click «Clean» button, wait, click «Select ISO» button.
Rebuilding a new ISO image must be less than 4 GB size, due to limitation of ISO 9660 file system. Following this, it is the limitation of the compressed file filesystem.squashfs itself.
Also, user may notice at some limitations due to chroot limitations while remastering. For such cases, workarounds and howtos may be found in Tutorials page.