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Author Topic: Repeatedly running ezremaster  (Read 4404 times)

Offline TerryJC

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Repeatedly running ezremaster
« on: December 08, 2010, 06:18:41 AM »
Hi,

At the end of ezremaster is the message that the ISO can be rebuilt using the ezremaster.cfg file.  This is a really useful feature for (as it says) updating the ISO when new versions of TC come out.

What I haven't been able to find is some way of using that config file with ezremaster itself.  It would be really useful if an ezremaster session could begin with fields preloaded with the settings from the last session, so minor tweaks could be made and the image rebuilt with slightly different content or settings.

Can ezremaster do this, or is this a feature request?

Offline ixbrian

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Re: Repeatedly running ezremaster
« Reply #1 on: December 08, 2010, 11:27:16 PM »
Hi,

At the end of ezremaster is the message that the ISO can be rebuilt using the ezremaster.cfg file.  This is a really useful feature for (as it says) updating the ISO when new versions of TC come out.

What I haven't been able to find is some way of using that config file with ezremaster itself.  It would be really useful if an ezremaster session could begin with fields preloaded with the settings from the last session, so minor tweaks could be made and the image rebuilt with slightly different content or settings.

Can ezremaster do this, or is this a feature request?

ezremaster is just a GUI frontend that creates a text file called "ezremaster.cfg".   Then it calls the "remaster.sh" script that actually does all of the remastering. 

It is not possible to load a "ezremaster.cfg" file in to ezremaster.   However, the ezremaster.cfg is just a text file that you can edit and change things such as the path to the Tiny Core ISO file.   So if you save your ezremaster.cfg file, and then a new version of Tiny Core is released, just edit ezremaster.cfg to have the new path to the new Tiny Core ISO, and then run "remaster.sh /path/to/ezremaster.cfg rebuild" and your remaster will be rebuilt with the new version of Tiny Core. 

Offline TerryJC

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Re: Repeatedly running ezremaster
« Reply #2 on: December 09, 2010, 02:11:38 AM »

ezremaster is just a GUI frontend that creates a text file called "ezremaster.cfg".   Then it calls the "remaster.sh" script that actually does all of the remastering. 

It is not possible to load a "ezremaster.cfg" file in to ezremaster.   However, the ezremaster.cfg is just a text file that you can edit and change things such as the path to the Tiny Core ISO file.   So if you save your ezremaster.cfg file, and then a new version of Tiny Core is released, just edit ezremaster.cfg to have the new path to the new Tiny Core ISO, and then run "remaster.sh /path/to/ezremaster.cfg rebuild" and your remaster will be rebuilt with the new version of Tiny Core. 

I was thinking more about other changes to the system, such as additional scripts, etc.

However, having understood how the remastering process works a little better than I did, I see that if I edit the files in my .../extract structure I can actually use remaster to build an updated ISO with different files in it.

Thanks for your guidance.

Offline TerryJC

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Re: Repeatedly running ezremaster
« Reply #3 on: December 14, 2010, 03:42:43 AM »
However, having understood how the remastering process works a little better than I did, I see that if I edit the files in my .../extract structure I can actually use remaster to build an updated ISO with different files in it.

What I've actually found is that the command 'remaster.sh /path/to/ezremaster.cfg rebuild' re-runs everything that ezremaster itself did, which would be great if modifications to the /extract files hadn't been made by clicking on the blue links in the last page. The rebuild script does everything, including making the contents of the /extract directories, but it only knows what is in ezremaster.cfg, so any edits are lost.  Is there are way to just build the system from the pre-existing /extract directories?

As an aside, I notice that the script only seems to work after ezremaster itself has at least been started.  Is this to be expected?

Offline TerryJC

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Re: Repeatedly running ezremaster
« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2010, 02:21:52 AM »
What I've actually found is that the command 'remaster.sh /path/to/ezremaster.cfg rebuild' re-runs everything that ezremaster itself did, which would be great if modifications to the /extract files hadn't been made by clicking on the blue links in the last page. The rebuild script does everything, including making the contents of the /extract directories, but it only knows what is in ezremaster.cfg, so any edits are lost.  Is there are way to just build the system from the pre-existing /extract directories?

As an aside, I notice that the script only seems to work after ezremaster itself has at least been started.  Is this to be expected?

Is there an answer for this, or do I have to re-run ezremaster every time?

Offline ixbrian

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Re: Repeatedly running ezremaster
« Reply #5 on: December 16, 2010, 06:02:27 PM »
What I've actually found is that the command 'remaster.sh /path/to/ezremaster.cfg rebuild' re-runs everything that ezremaster itself did, which would be great if modifications to the /extract files hadn't been made by clicking on the blue links in the last page. The rebuild script does everything, including making the contents of the /extract directories, but it only knows what is in ezremaster.cfg, so any edits are lost.  Is there are way to just build the system from the pre-existing /extract directories?

As an aside, I notice that the script only seems to work after ezremaster itself has at least been started.  Is this to be expected?

Is there an answer for this, or do I have to re-run ezremaster every time?

If what you are trying to do is automate rebuilding your remaster that includes custom changes made within the filessytem, I would recommend this approach:

Create your ezremaster.cfg file.  Then create a script such as the one below that you can use to automate rebuilding (for example when new versions of Tiny Core are released)

Code: [Select]
remaster.sh /path/to/ezremaster.cfg extractimage
remaster.sh /path/to/ezremaster.cfg bootcode
remaster.sh /path/to/ezremaster.cfg apps
<put your custom commands here such as copying in files, editing files, etc.>
remaster.sh /path/to/ezremaster.cfg package

When you run this, it will do all of the normal ezremaster stuff, and you can run any custom commands you want to customize the ISO contents or the tinycore.gz initrd. 

This script could then be run any time a new version of Tiny Core is released to update your remaster.