Make your own polippix

Here we describe how you make a Polippix, update it, and change it, so that you can make a new version.

This guide assumes that you are running a Debian-based Linux distribution (e.g. Debian, Ubuntu, Kubuntu). If you are running a non-Debian-based distribution (e.g. Red Hat, Mandriva, Gentoo, Slackware, Novell/Suse), especially the apt-get commands must be replaced by the equivalent commands in that distribution.

Our svn-repository is incremental. We don't have the entire polippix CD. We just have the files that are necessary to change a Kubuntu to a Polippix or update an older Polippix. Please notice, that you must have about 4 GB of free space.

Get the files and preparation

First of all, you must be logged in as root for all of this to work.

Then, you must have subversion. You also need to have squashfs-tools because the ubuntu-cd is compressed by means of the squash-filesystem. It is necessary to have genisoimage if you will produce your own CD.:

Currently you neew squashfs-tool 3, it on Debian unstable/testing, downgrade to stable (apt-get install squashfs-tools/stable)

apt-get install subversion genisoimage squashfs-tools

On a fresh debian (lenny) system you also need these packages not installed by default:

squashfs-modules-[kernelversion]
rsync
xcftools
netpbm
squashfs-tools
build-essential
fuseiso
fakeroot-ng

Setting rights

You must be a member of the fuse group:


	adduser elgaard fuse

Currently Ubuntu/debian has a bug in fakechroot. Use this patch if you make a 32 bit Polippix on AMD platform Now test if your kernel support the squashfs filesystem. It should return "squashfs"

 modprobe squashfs;grep squash  < /proc/filesystems

Then, go to the directory where you will place your polippix. Svn will create a directory called svn.polippix.org.

Then get the svn files:

svn co  svn://svn.polippix.org

We need to download the kubuntu cd that Polippix is based upon. First go into the ubuntu_trunk directory:

cd svn.polippix.org/ubuntu_trunk/

Then run the following command to download the latest kubuntu image:

make download-kubuntu

Making of Polippix

We extract the Kubuntu-files from the iso-file so that we a workable Kubuntu operating system:
make unpack It takes some time. Eventually, your kubuntu CD is unpacked in: svn.polippix.org/ubuntu_trunk/local_workspace/virtual_filesystem/

Transform the Kubuntu image to a Polippix image.

make setup

Polippix currently fully support two languages: danish and english
Choose one or the other.

make danish

Now is the time to make changes. The Polippix-system is located in a subdirectory called local_workspace/virtual_filesystem.

Compile it into a polippix cd

make polippix.iso

Congratulations! Now you have a homebrewn Polippix CD-image. The cd-image is located in the local_workspace folder.

Chaging Polippix

You can install/remove programs by modifying the file:

svn.polippix.org/ubuntu_trunk/our_changes/dpkg-selections

Updating

You can always update your Polippix to the latest version in svn by running the following commands:

cd svn.polippix.org
svn update
cd ubuntu_trunk
make setup
make [danish or english]
make polippix.iso

Testing

If you want to test your image without burning a CD, use Qemu, or Virtualbox (vmware should also work)

If you use VirtualBox 3.0 and the graphics look funny or you only get a black screen, use: export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1;