QA/Test Days/Live Image

Creating a Test Day Live Image

The following steps outline how to create a Fedora live image based on current Rawhide packages for use during test days.

1. Install required packages:

yum install spin-kickstarts livecd-tools

2. Save most recent fedora-live-base.ks and fedora-livecd-desktop.ks kickstart templates to a custom directory:

wget 'http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/spin-kickstarts.git?p=spin-kickstarts.git;a=blob_plain;f=fedora-live-base.ks;hb=HEAD' -O fedora-live-base.ks
wget 'http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/spin-kickstarts.git?p=spin-kickstarts.git;a=blob_plain;f=fedora-livecd-desktop.ks;hb=HEAD' -O fedora-livecd-desktop.ks

3. Create a new testday kickstart template fedora-livecd-testday.ks in the same directory, with this content:

%include fedora-livecd-desktop.ks

repo --name jlaska --baseurl http://jlaska.fedorapeople.org/repos/testday
repo --name awilliam --baseurl http://adamwill.fedorapeople.org/nouveau

%packages
gdb
strace
ltrace
rendercheck
libdrm
-olpc-logos

# rebrand test spins
fedora-logos
-generic-logos
%end 

%post
# Set Test_Day:Current as default browser homepage
cat << EOF > /usr/lib*/firefox*/browserconfig.properties
browser.startup.homepage=https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:Current
EOF

# Create a .desktop link for Test Day
mkdir -p /etc/skel/Desktop
cat << EOF > /etc/skel/Desktop/testday.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Participate in a Test Day
Type=Link
URL=https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:Current
Icon=gnome-fs-bookmark
EOF
%end

3. Create the live image:

livecd-creator -c fedora-livecd-testday.ks --cache /var/cache/live -f "testday-`date +%Y%m%d`"

In case rawhide repository is broken
If current rawhide repository is broken and the livecd can't be built, and you have access to some mirror with older rawhide snapshot, you may edit fedora-livecd-testday.ks and redefine the rawhide repository after the %include line, for example looking like this:

repo --name=rawhide --baseurl=protocol:/path-to-older-rawhide-repository/$basearch/os/

In the worst case you can base the whole livecd on Fedora 11 packages with this definition:

# not really rawhide, overriden with F11 'released' repo
repo --name=rawhide --mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-11&arch=$basearch
repo --name=updates --mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-f11&arch=$basearch

Don't forget to comment out these lines when rawhide repository gets fixed.

Using the Live Image

• To write the live image to a USB stick.
• To write the live image to a CD or DVD media.
• To load the live image in KVM or qemu.

Ideas For Improvement

1. Create a .desktop file with a Test Day URL on the Desktop
2. Make browser default homepage http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:Current (suggested by User:sgallagh)
3. Setup a test day .repo for the running live image (suggested by User:sgallagh)