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By Roshan Mehta on May 1, 2011 in For You & Me, How-Tos, Tools / Apps http://www.linuxforu.com/2011/05/about-live-cds-how-to-cut-a-live-disc-using-uck/
When I heard the term Live CD, I thought it was a rock band but very soon, I learnt what a wonderful thing it was. This article not only introduces readers to the concept, but also shows you how to create a Live CD of your own.
A Live CD is a convenient and easy approach for users to try out an operating system and run preconfigured software, or do virtually everything that you can with an installed system. Its a bootable CD-ROM disk that loads an operating system without the need to permanently install it on a storage device like a hard drive. The origin of the Live CD was not a CD at all, but a bootable floppy disk. Usually, hardware manufacturers and anti-virus developers produced bootable floppy disks for various operating systems, to perform certain administrative tasks that were not possible with the OS already running. For example, anti-virus software needed users to boot their system in a known safe condition, so that any virus infections on the machine would not interfere with virus-testing activity. Hardware manufacturers distributed bootable floppy disks to allow the system user to test the hardware products without OS intervention, and to be sure that the firmware was working correctly. Now, from the general users point of view, Live CDs can be used to repair non-working systems. For example, I used it to repair my GRUB bootloader after a Windows installation. You can also use it to browse the Internet if, for instance, you go to a cyber caf, where youre sceptical about whether the computer has keyloggers or other spyware on it, that could steal your personal information. You can just insert a Live CD, and within a short time, youre ready to use the computer with your own, clean and secure operating system! You can even use your pen drive as a storage medium, or can play online/offline games. The best part is that your CD is read-only, and cannot be tampered with, or infected, so it is far safer than an installed OS. Now, lets talk about some history. The first Live CD was FM town OS, first released in 1989. The first Linux-based Live CD was Yggdrasil Linux, released in 1992-93, with the aim of describing Linux as plug-and-play, but very soon, its production stopped. Then, in 2000, the Finnix Live CD was born; it is still in production. The most remarkable Linux Live CD is Klaus Knoppers creation, Knoppix a Debian-derivative Linux distribution. Presently, almost all Linux distributions provide live environments for example, Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu, etc.
Make sure your UCK version is 2.0.10 or higher, because with older versions you cannot customise recent versions of Ubuntu like Karmic or Lucid. The UCK startup screen shows its version see Figure 1.
Figure 1: UCK startup screenshot You need the ISO image of the Ubuntu version you want to customise; either obtain it from the Ubuntu website, or you can create one from the installation CD: insert the CD in the CD drive, and issue one of the following commands in a terminal window to create the ISO image in your home folder:
dd if=/dev/dvd of=my_dvd.iso dd if=/dev/cdrom of=my_cd.iso ## for dvd ##for cdrom
Note: Some systems have /dev/sr0 as the device name for the optical disk drive, and do not mount the CD by default.
Its better if you are using the same Ubuntu version which you intend to customise. If not, do these changes:
1. In a terminal, run gedit /etc/apt/sources.list.
2. Change the name of the Ubuntu version to the one you are customising. For example, change Lucid to Karmic. Dont forget to reverse these changes after youve finished customising your Live CD!
Now lets move on to using UCK. Launch Applications > Ubuntu Customisation Kit. Choose the language packages to install; just click OK if you do not want an ISO with custom languages. Do the same thing for the choice of language used during the bootup process. Choose the desktop environment. (Make sure that your ISO image has that environment; choose GNOME for Ubuntu, and KDE for Kubuntu.) Select the Ubuntu ISO file. Keep Windows-related files if you want to use the CD under Windows. When the UCK package manager opens, customise the list of packages you want (remove and add packages as desired). Select Continue Building, and your ISO image will be saved in /tmp/remaster-new-files/livecd.iso. Burn the images to a CD or DVD using your favourite CD/DVD burning application. Live CDs are a wonderwall for me, as they enable me to work without worrying about security and storage space. They enable me to play with new Linux distros without installation. They even let me recover a crashed system! In my opinion, it is very handy for everyone to have a Live CD in their pocket.
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