Re: HOWTO create a localized live CD

[Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net>]

Terance Edward Sola wrote:

> Under follows a HOWTO for the Live CD provided by Marcus Bauer. I mailed
> him with some questions which you can find at the bottom but he hasn't
> replied so I thought I'd send it here in a "Feel Lucky?" manner :-)
>
> man, 23,.05.2005 kl. 14.05 +0200, skrev Marcus Bauer:
>  
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > below is a first draft about how to create a live CD. Check it out and
> > give me your feedback. It would be great if we could work on a common
> > plattform, i.e. not everybody having his personal script but collecting
> > all improvements. Same thing applies for your local enhancements: please
> > let me know what you added/changed so we can integrate that into the
> > process. 
> >
> > Thanks for your support!
> >
> >
> >
> > HOWTO create a localized live CD
> > ================================
> >
> > Prerequisites
> > -------------
> >
> > Install the following packages (here the debian names):
> > cloop-utils rsync mkisofs msttcorefonts syslinux
> >
> > Make sure you have enough memory, you need 700MB free; a swapfile is
> > easily added:
> >  dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile bs=1024 count=700k
> >  mkswap -c swapfile
> >  swapon swapfile
> >
> > Download: http://project77.info/gnomelive/livecd.tgz (900KB)
> > and unpack it. This will create under livecd/ the necessary directories
> > and contains stuff for localization and branding.
> >
> > Next you need to download the live CD iso from ubuntu:
> > http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/5.04/ubuntu-5.04-live-i386.iso
> > (if you are short of bandwidth and just want to help localization you
> > can skip this)
> >
> > Change to livecd/locales and create a directory with the name of your
> > locale (i.e. pt_BR or no_NO) and copy everything from en_US into it.
> >
> > Translations
> > ------------
> > You need to translate all the text files, at least isolinux.txt and
> > f1.txt; don't worry that doesn't take more than 10 minutes.
> >
> > Changing images
> > ---------------
> > boot-splash:
> > * open gnome-boot-splash-it.xcf in gimp
> >  the text is in separate layers which makes changes easy
> >  font is trebuchet bold
> > * make your changes and save in .xcf to be able to reuse it
> > * merge visible layers (it is important to merge before indexing)
> > * image->mode->indexed->16 colors, dithering: none
> > * save as .ppm, raw mode
> > * now run on the command line:
> >  ppmtolss16 < gnome-boot-splash-XY.ppm > splash.rle
> >  XY=your language, i.e. pt, no etc.
> >
> > gnome-backgound:
> > * open gnome-background-XY.xcf in gimp
> > * make your changes an save as .jpg
> >
> > To add additional software, add them the .deb packages to your
> > directory. manpages-XY and doc-linux-XY may be a good starting point.
> >
> > You may download a copy of the latest firefox for windows and save it to
> > the winprogs directory. Thus after a demonstration of the gnome liveCD
> > you can install a first open source program on that computer you ran the
> > liveCD on (which most likly is running windows...)
> >
> > FINISHED. You are done!
> >
> > Now change back to livecd/ and run: ./make_livecd.sh
> >
> > Depending on the speed of your Computer and network connection it takes
> > about an hour to create the new .iso.
> >
> >
> > ===============================================================
> >
> > Some more words:
> >
> > In case of problems (not unlikely) and/or questions just mail me. I'm
> > currently quite familiar with that stuff and may save you a lot of
> > time. 
> >
> > The script still needs more extensions, a lot of stuff is still
> > hardwired which is a bad thing(tm). Your experience is needed to enhance
> > the script to make it possible to create them all on the fly for gnome
> > 2.12. 
> >
> > Have fun!
> > Marcus
> >
> >    
>
> Hello, I requested[1] some info on how to create a localised Live CD
> some time back. I didn't notice your reply/HOWTO until yesterday though.
> The HOWTO was very explaining and I've successfully created the iso but
> it still got some issues;
>
> * I've translated the f1.txt and so on files, but the Norwegian
> characters doesn't show correctly when you boot. Is it even possible to
> make them show correctly?
>  
This is an interesting issue. At the point when these text files are shown,
only the boot loader/grub is running. No linux kernel, not userspace 
applications, just grub.
The default font I think is the system font and there should be a way 
from within grub to change the
font.
I have heard reports that other LiveCD projects managed to make the font 
change, and you can see
languages such as Greek. But this is for Knoppix-derived (knoppel-greek 
in that case).
I do not know the specifics and I am really interested to find out how 
this can be achieved.

> * The autorun feature didn't work on with windows. Do you have any clue
> if this is my fault or? The autorun.ini file etc was in place.
>  
"autorun.ini" should be in the root directory of the CD. Also, it might 
need to be in DOS text file style (CRLF),
use "unix2dos" to convert.
Post the contents of the file.

> * I created the iso using ./the-make-script nb nb-NO iirc. And choose
> nb-NO in the locale dialog accordingly afterwards. When I opened firefox
> it obviously tried to open a localised version of the start page but
> nb-NO isn't supported (probably only "no" or "nb" is). Do you have any
> idea if this is a key that resides somewhere I can change it before
> making the iso? It looks slightly unprofessional that the start page has
> an error message.
>
> * Is it fairly trivial to put my own things in /Desktop so that if we
> translated luis' documents we could put them there?
>  
Yes, it's easy. You need to create .desktop files for item that you want 
to show on the Desktop.

Could you send the boot logo image you created? You mention you created 
it with The GIMP.
I tried to use gimp but I was not happy with the quality. The letters 
did not appear antialised.
You get a better result if you use InkScape, and Andreas has done an 
image you can easily use:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2005-June/msg00021.html
Load the .svg file with Inkscape, then change the text to your language.

Simos

> Btw, has there been any progress in the "Start here" document for the
> live CDs" that you know of? I would love to help out although for the
> time  being I don't know how to use docbook. 
>
> Hope this isn't too much of a hassle for you!
>
> Cheers,
> Terance
>
>
> [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2005-May/msg00192.html
>
>