Saltimbocca- roast-one question...

[ew.linux]

HI. I installed a Saltimbocca 486 iso that I had laying around. I pussled a bit to be able to login, until I remembered the bit about deleting the last line in bash_profile... Anyway, I created and deleted a few accounts until I found the solution, and now Im left with one "root" user/account, and my own useraccount with root-permissions.

Thats all fine, and as I want it to be. But my question is if I sometime in the future want to take a snapshot and create a distro, is it my useraccount who will be imaged, or the root account. Should I make all customizations global in able for them to stick on the ISO I create, or will my local customizations be present in the distro I make?

Im not able to login with bbg/bbq if thats a requirement. That one I lost in my first login-problems, so if that account is required then I have to recreate it...

Anyway. Everything is working perfect. I just want to be sure not to waste a lot time configuring in a way that isnt going to be the default configuration in the distro that I create.... I want to do it in a way so that my themes, my wallpaper, my conky-config, and every aspect of my setup etc..., is going to be the default configuration for all users in the distro I create. Except perhaps keyboardmaps and stuff that people need to be able to configure them selve. Having a norwegian keyboard as default on a distro is probably not a good idea:)

[machinebacon]

Hi ew,

the ISO you downloaded had this problem, but I fixed it the next day and uploaded the new image. But good you got it working!

To answer you questions:

- Which accounts will be imaged?
Generally, all. The root account is usually a quite small one which doesn't weigh much. The user account has much more hidden garbage (literally, see the Trash folder). You can exclude complete folders from the imaging process, for example if you have your own and your BH's user folders, you can exclude the folder of your BH (see the file /usr/lib/bbqsnapshot/snapshot_exclude.list) but for a single-user system you don't need to care about it.

- Can the username be different than bbq?
Yes, no problem at all. The script that images your system does not specifically look for a username.

- What about customizations?
Now we come to the fun part. If you customize the user folder /home/ew and put all your configuration files there, you will only have the customization in the live session (when you boot from USB or CD) but not on subsequently created new users. Why is that? Because during installation of the system onto the users hard drive, a new user is created. Even if the username is "ew" he will not get your customizations. What to do? It's simple - put the customizations also into the folder /etc/skel/ -- imagine it to be the "home folder for future users". So, what usually is /home/ew/.conkyrc becomes /etc/skel/.conkyrc
This does bring the great advantage that you can have a completely different setup for a live session and for newly created users. Keep in mind that this only applies for the content of the home folder, but not the installed applications.
One more thing you should please remember is that a simple copy/paste of the home folder to /etc/skel might include private data. I recommend following procedure which is a bit lengthier than a simple copy-paste:

1) remove the folders named .adobe, .mozilla, .macromedia from your home folder
2) remove the Trash folder inside of .local/share/applications
3) now that you removed these things, they are in the Trash folder of /root/ - we care about this later
4) Open a file manager as root (!) - select and copy all items in /home/user/
5) Change to the /etc/skel/ and select all items there, then delete them
6) Paste the items you previously copied from /home/user
7) Exit the file manager, and start the bbqsnapshot-gui as root. Continue until the popup appears that you can now edit the bootloader file.
8) Open another terminal, and enter: sudo ncdu /home/work/myfs
9) What you see now is the structure of the ISO before it is being processed to a bootable image. All changes that you do here are final. Use the cursor keys and [Enter] to browse through the content. Notice the file sizes on the right hand side.
10) As first, move to /home/work/myfs/etc/skel/ and remove all the items that are private or garbage. Use 'd' to 'delete' The ".." in the first row brings you a level higher in the folder hierarchy.
11) Do the same for /home/work/myfs/home/USERNAME/ and remove everything you don't want to have in the live session
12) Now go to the /home/work/myfs/root and do the same
12) Move on to /home/work/myfs/usr/share/icons/ and remove the cached icons -- you can recognize them by their names.
13) ... Continue removing what you think is rubbish, unneeded. Be aware, you can seriously mess up your future system.
14) When finished, close this terminal and continue to edit the bootloader etc. in the snapshot tool.

Note that these steps are only needed for a system that your share with others. If file size and privacy is no concern, simpy run the snapshot tool without further editing. I do recommend removing the garbage in home anyway, as well as the aforementioned dotfiles.

In short:
- your /home/ew (now) will only be visible in the live session.
- your /etc/skel (now) will be the ones that the installed system uses for new users (also for the user who installs it)

Very important: check the /etc/bbqsnapshot.conf file - read through it. It explains quite a lot :)

Happy roasting!

Edit: I might add one thing about 486 and 686. The 686 release will work on most PC back to Intel Celeron. It contains the siduction kernel, opposed to the 486 version that runs on the Debian vanilla kernel (3.2.0.x vs 3.6.x) -- judging from the download stats, there is no huge demand for the 486 version and I might drop it in the future, as it requires quite some extra work. You will of course get all regular upgrades from upstream, but problems related to the kernel I can't look into :)

[ew.linux]

Hi ew,

the ISO you downloaded had this problem, but I fixed it the next day and uploaded the new image. But good you got it working!

Edit: I might add one thing about 486 and 686. The 686 release will work on most PC back to Intel Celeron. It contains the siduction kernel, opposed to the 486 version that runs on the Debian vanilla kernel (3.2.0.x vs 3.6.x) -- judging from the download stats, there is no huge demand for the 486 version and I might drop it in the future, as it requires quite some extra work. You will of course get all regular upgrades from upstream, but problems related to the kernel I can't look into :)

Thanks a lot. This post is copied and added in my dropbox folder. I see your point with the 686 kernel. But now I`m on a very old pc, and the first distro I create will mostly be for my own use whenever I come across really old pc`s. It`s a hobby of mine. I`m buying old laptops to fix and upgrade. The more damaged, the more inspiring it gets. I change everything that is needed, and if I have to, I also do a nice paint job:) But it`s rare that I find it worth the cost to upgrade the motherboard on a laptop, so that limits me, and in those cases a 486-kernel is nice. But of course, this is only for my own amusement. Sometimes I give away pc`s and I also repair a lot of them for others, but then it`s mostly Windows. Linux is a rare breed here where I`m living. Unfortunately.

So I guess I will just play with the 486-kernel version, and hopefully create a distro that is optimal for my own use on older laptops... Then I`m going to buy myself a new laptop for christmas, instead of using other peoples left-overs, an don this pc I will install the 686-kernel, and try to create a distro that is as professional that I`m possibly able to. Until then, I can do a lot of training with the 486-kernel on this laptop, preparing me for bigger tasks...

I also have installed Siduction lxde with openbox, and I`m multitasking between bbq and siduction. I`m not afraid of the terminal anymore, and that has resulted in a lot of progress.... I`m getting there:)))

By the way, another question. Will the login-issue also be an issue for a ISO that I create based on the ISO below?

"the ISO you downloaded had this problem, but I fixed it the next day and uploaded the new image. But good you got it working!"