LXDE Forums

How does one customize the Debian/Lxde live-CD that one downloads from this site? I have tried copying /user with all my settings to squashfs-root/home/user, building a new filesystem.squashfs and burning a new CD but it refuses to read it. Worse, it tries to build a second /user. There has to be another way to do this and I'm sure someone has tried it. Any ideas?

Does anyone know where LXDE hides the instruction to not use my custom /user and all it's hidden files?

You could try with Remastersys http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/debian.html.

paxman wrote:You could try with Remastersys.

Thanks, do they have a 64 bit version? Even If they don't, they might have instructions. I'll take a look.

I played a bit with Remastersys but it doesn't lead where I want to go. I want to change the defaults in the live-CD so that it mimics what it would do if I installed it to my hard drive. Basically, I want to have a portable Debian-Lxde all set up with my Iceweasel settings, bookmarks, etc. This should not be so hard to do and I'm a bit surprised that there isn't documentation about it here.

So far, I'm finding Slax much better for this. Slax uses a file called rootcopy which gets added to and booted by the live-cd.

The Debian-Lxde live-CD should be a natural for customization. It is easy to take apart and put back together. The problem is that it boots to the original instead of the desired changes. What has to be changed?

It is a debian disk. You maybe should aks some debian guys. I have not seen many of them here.

archibald haddock wrote:It is a degian disk. YOu maybe should aks some debian guys. I havenot seen many of them here.

That's what I started doing. If I find an answer, I'll post it here.

I'm beginning to make progress with this. I've replaced the opening splash.png and altered the backgrounds. Iceweasel now has my configuration and bookmarks. Some of the /etc files have been changed.

First, I made a directory on my hard drive called /lxde. Then I booted the CD and made all the changes I wanted. Then I copied the /.user directory to my harddrive /lxde, exited the CD and rebooted my system.

I used Isomaster to break the iso apart and export the filesystem.squashfs. Then I did which creates squashfs-root. One can prowl around squashfs-root and change things as one likes.

The mistake I made before was to copu /.user to squashfs-root. That doesn't work. All it does is slow the boot process which rejects it. The place to put /.user files is in /etc/skel. One can actually put the whole /.user file in /etc/skel but it slows the boot and is unnecessary. I did add the .mozilla file which has all my Iceweasel settings. I also made changes to files such as /etc/apt/sources.list. When I was satisfied, I put it back together with Isomaster put it back together. A fresh burn was all it took.

I still have not figured out how to make the audio/video to work yet. I have not had the time to dig into it yet. Still, I am writing this using my live-CD away from home on someone else's machine, which was the goal.

I now have the audio-video working. To make it work I had to And put it all back together. This has become much nicer. I can hand the CD to anybody and he/she can boot it and everything works the way I want it to.

I am really surprised that there is not more interest on this forum for re-mastering the live-CD. LXDE is an absolute natural for this. Because LXDE is so compact, it does not take up a lot of space on the CD yet it is fully functional when booted up. The CD I have made up is only 481.8mb.