[GLLUG] Fwd: Re: Compiling Linux & Distros

Karl Schuttler karl.schuttler at gmail.com
Wed Jan 29 12:24:58 EST 2014


I've come to have all my linux stuff virtualized in a VMware environment. I
can build  a base VM to my specs and then just copy it as many times as I
need.

I can only see the value in this if you are pushing it across a large
environment (i.e., a Gold build) or if you want to distribute a customized,
subject-focused distribution to others (e.g., Kali linux), or both
(SELinux, Scientific linux).

In most of these cases, you're probably just taking another distribution
and customizing it to where you like, rather than building completely from
the ground up. If you take care to properly document the steps you followed
to get to the finished customized product, then it should be relatively
easy just to script the whole process out (i.e., install all the desired
packages), and then copy any necessary configuration files from another
source. This seems like it would offer a much higher effort:reward ratio if
you don't fall into the aforementioned categories.

Case in point, a previous job I had was to install new server builds. We
used Gentoo, which is a completely source-compiled distro (all packages are
built from source). At the time, Gentoo did not have a boot-cd easy
install, so our process involved booting the system into a small flavor of
bootable linux, partitioning the drives, installing the bootloader, and
then untarring a completely installed filesystem onto the disk.





On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 12:00 PM, Clay Dowling <clay at lazarusid.com> wrote:

> -------- Original Message --------
> > Subject: Re: [GLLUG] Compiling Linux & Distros
> > Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 11:53:51 -0500
> > From: Mike <mgoppold5 at yahoo.com>
> > To: Patrick Goupell <patrick at upmerchants.com>
> >
> > Thanks for all the replies people--good info.
> >
> > I guess I'm fancy.  PURPOSE: If I like a distro, it'd be nice to run a
> > program that builds a whole install cd.  Then check checksums with
> > download CDs.  This BSD build world process sounds rather good.
> >
> I cannot recommend it if you can avoid it.  BSD style builds are long
> and unpleasantly complicated.
>
> Clay
> _______________________________________________
> linux-user mailing list
> linux-user at egr.msu.edu
> http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/public/linux-user/attachments/20140129/48a521b4/attachment.html>


More information about the linux-user mailing list