Creating the Fedora JBoss Spin (GSOC 2012)

In my last post, I mentioned that I had created a kickstart file to build what will become the Fedora JBoss Spin. Noting that this is still very much in development, and hasn’t been submitted to the Spins SIG yet, I even hesitate to call it a ‘Spin’ yet. Anyway, in this post I will briefly explain how to create an ISO disk image from that file. Once the ISO image is ready, it can be installed as a live media onto a USB stick or a DVD; or it can be run in a virtual setting.

The livecd-creator tool is provided by the livecd-tools package, and we also need some of the standard kickstart files from fedora-kickstarts:

sudo yum install livecd-tools fedora-kickstarts

Next we need to get the custom kickstart file for the Fedora JBoss Spin:

curl -o fedora-livedvd-jboss.ks http://galileo.fedorapeople.org/fedora-livedvd-jboss/fedora-livedvd-jboss.ks

Before we can build it, we must make the standard kickstart files that we need, available in the same directory that we’ve got the custom one in, so in that directory:

Now the image can be created. Note that this step may take a while. It will also download a lot of packages, so the your internet connection will play a part in how long it will take:

sudo livecd-creator -v --config=fedora-livedvd-jboss.ks --releasever=17

Now that you have a freshly squeezed live ISO image, you can do what you want with it. You can use it in your favourite virtual environment, or you can put it on a USB stick and live boot from that!