is it possible to make an iso file with an installed distro,what i mean is if i do a fresh install and config it the way i want it is there some way to make an iso file of that so if i need to install it again it will be installed pre config.
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Hello if you are referring to making a bootable snapshot of an installed system in the form of an iso image than you have several software options like mx snapshot (only on mxlinux), refracta snapshot(only on devuan) . Outside of those there is also penguin eggs which is a utility that also allows you to do that but on any distro supported by penguin eggs . It’s important to note that penguin eggs is used in the terminal not in a gui but it’s really well made i used it myself a few times . You should check the website penguin-eggs.net. I hope it helps !
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One more thing refracta snapshot also works on refracta os a derivative of devuan. Which distro are you running ?
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It is also on antiX linux.
One can also make an iso by hand . Make a squashfs of your filesystem ,do a loop mount of a copy of the install iso, and copy your new squashfs overwriting the existing one. Unmount it and dd it to a usb key.
That will give you all the original bootloaders and stuff, but a new squashfs.
I recently did that to make myself a customised clonezilla.
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That URL doesn’t work for me (from Australia)…
Google Search brought up the GitHub repo :
I have a vague memory of an It’s FOSS newsletter article that mentioned Penguins Eggs…
I think @cat-man is running both Fedora and CachyOS…
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There is a forum discussion
That reminds me , Howard @easyt50 asked a question in that discussion and I never got back to answering it.
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I have both Fedora and Chacy os
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Maybe it was me, but I did not have a good experience with Penguins Eggs.
Seems it was not compatible with Mint.
I believe you did a good job answering it. No need to re-visit.
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I think, I missed the issue of … after you make the .iso file, how can you use it for a full or partial recovery?
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I’ll have to try and remember Penguin Eggs next time I do a fresh install and I’ve got a “baseline” that’s got my cloud sync setup (and all sync’d), Steam client installed (but not games library), apps I need for work (e.g. Citrix), my shell scripts (they’re in my cloud sync) base apps I can’t get by without, Google Chrome, Brave Browser, Firefox, Sayonara, MPV, ffmpeg, zsh and oh-my-zsh, ~/.ssh/ folder and my keys, Synergy KVM…
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Use rsync, it is faster … no compression = fast
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I developed a different approach, this is not exactly what you are looking for, but may be worth of considering it.
I start with a vanilla (Debian) setup.
Whatever I change in it I note it in a script.
For example:
I don’t want the slick greeter to be installed, but the old-school lightdm-gtk-greeter.
That is done by removing slick greater (the other greeter will be installed automatically), and change the config accordingly.
In the script this looks like this:
#lightdm slick --> gtk-greeter
apt -y purge slick-greeter lightdm-settings
apt -y install lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings
sed -i 's/slick-greeter/lightdm-gtk-greeter/g' /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
Additionally I want to show the available users on that login page, I need to change lightdm config, that in the script looks like:
mkdir -p /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d
cat << _01conf > /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/01.conf
[Seat:*]
greeter-hide-users=false
_01conf
Or say I want OnlyOffice, so I set up the repo and install it.
In the script it looks like:
###ONLYOFFICE repo
echo 'deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/onlyoffice.gpg] https://download.onlyoffice.com/repo/debian squeeze main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/onlyoffice.list
gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring gnupg-ring:/usr/share/keyrings/onlyoffice.gpg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys CB2DE8E5
chmod 644 /usr/share/keyrings/onlyoffice.gpg
This just sets up the repo, it is somewhere in the beginning of the script, then later the real install is where I instruct to install office-like apps:
#iroda
apt install -y gimagereader tesseract-ocr tesseract-ocr-hun gucharmap pdfarranger softmaker-freeoffice-2024 onlyoffice-desktopeditors
I don’t like gnome-text, evince, but do like xed, xrader, xviewer and such. Hence I replace them, this is how it looks:
apt purge gnome-text-editor evince gnome-calculator gedit eog -y
apt install -y galculator xed xreader xviewer xviewer-plugins nemo-fileroller nemo-preview sticky warpinator -y
I need some system tweaks, such as number of inotify watches (esentially necessary for Seafile client), change USB drives access permission for ordinary users, and such. These are simple changes in system config files, the script looks like:
##system configuration changes
echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288 > /etc/sysctl.d/fsnotify.conf
echo vm.min_free_kbytes=8192 > /etc/sysctl.d/vmminfree.conf
##virtualbox miatt:
echo "blacklist kvm_intel" > /etc/modprobe.d/kvm-blacklist.conf
## USB attached disks will be writeable without root privileges
echo 'KERNEL=="sd*", SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", MODE="0666"' | tee /etc/udev/rules.d/99-usb-storage.rules
#load on boot i2c for ddcutil
echo i2c-dev >> /etc/modules
I showed some examples, I hope you get the idea.
Whenever I need another install (maybe the system drive dies, or a newer computer appears in the family), I just install the vanilla Debian, run my customization script which makes the changes, and upon next reboot my customized system welcomes me.
This approach should work with any distro, not just Debian.
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But the point of this topic, and the mention of Penguin Eggs - is making bootable image of existing system… What’s rsync got to do with that? Don’t get me wrong - I use rsync all the time - it’s a great tool… But for making a bootable flash drive?
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No, I meant just a backup image. I thought that was what you wanted?
You CAN make a bootable flash drive with rsync. Partition it GPT like an internal disk, put grub on it, and rsync your linux to one of its partitions.
or
Install to it from an iso… same as install to an HD.
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Hi neville i meant that mxsnapshot specifically can only be used on mx linux antiX has it’s own tool called iso-snapshot that is a fork of mx snapshot . They both share the same underlying tool though .
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Penguin eggs supports fedora it can be used there . I don’t know about cachyOS somebody should check on the github of the project if it’s supported they have a list their of all the distros penguin eggs can be used on .
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Ok i just went on the penguin eggs website and linux mint and fedora are on the list of supported distros but i did not see cachy OS although i did see arch linux.
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Yes MX and antiX share lots of code. They have different user interfaces though.
I get what you meant now, thanks.
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Not really… I’ve mentioned previously in other posts - all my “volatile” data - documents - photos et cetera - are stored in my cloud sync (self hosted Resilio Sync)…
I don’t particularly care about .dotfiles either (or .dotfolders)…
It would be nice to just have some kinda vanilla desktop configuration that I can revert to if things go wrong…
Having said that - I can get Ubuntu or similar installed and all my stuff sync’d, my NAS mounted, my zsh and shell scripts all working in less than 2 hours… Maybe a bit longer to get Brave + Chrome installed and sync’d - but not necessarily… And what often happens - I don’t install some apps until I need them (oh crap! Gimp’s not installed : “sudo apt install gimp” and 5 mins later I’ve got Gimp).
NEVER been able to do that when I ran windows!
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I cant think of anything better than a plain rsync copy.
Get one of those hotplug disk cages like I have … it is great for snapshotting an OS,
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