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.

This guide is intended mainly for Fedora QA team
Ordinary users who want to participate on a test day don't have to follow this guide, the pre-built images will be published and available for them to download on a Test Day pages.

1. Install required packages:

yum install livecd-tools git

2. Download our most recent kickstart script:

git clone 'git://git.fedorahosted.org/spin-kickstarts.git' spin-kickstarts

or if you have done it in the past, just update it:

cd spin-kickstarts; git pull; cd ..

3. Create the live image:

livecd-creator -c spin-kickstarts/custom/qa-test-day.ks --cache /var/cache/live -f "testday-`date +%Y%m%d`"

Different architecture
You can use setarch command to create a x86 Live CD/DVD on a x86_64 system. Example: setarch i686 livecd-creator <...>.

Making custom changes

You can make any number of custom changes in the script. Just create a new file qa-test-day-custom.ks in the parent directory looking like this:

%include spin-kickstarts/custom/qa-test-day.ks

#redefine repo to some local mirror
#repo --name=rawhide --baseurl=file:/mnt/globalsync/fedora/linux/development/$basearch/os/

%packages
#provide list of packages (normal, wildcarded, @comps) to be added or removed - dependencies are handled
#packageYouWant
#wildcardedPackagesYouWant*
#@CompYouWant
#-packageYouDontWant
%end

%post
#put any shell commands here
%end

If you have some local mirror of Rawhide, it is recommended to redefine the repository and you will download the packages much faster than from the Internet. You can also install or uninstall any packages or run any commands in the shell.

After you have made your changes, just run the livecd-creator and point it to your new script.

Solving problems

Rawhide repository 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, create a new custom script and redefine the rawhide repository:

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.

Anaconda dependencies broken

Sometimes the image can't be built because of broken package dependencies. You may solve the problem by removing anaconda package. Anaconda requires a lot of dependencies and it may very often be the culprit. To remove anaconda you just create a custom script with -anaconda line in the %packages directive.

SELinux complaints

For building Test Days LiveCD you must have SELinux installed and enabled. Ideally it should be in the enforcing mode and everything should run fine. In case you have problems with that, you may switch the mode temporarily into permissive mode with this command run as root:

setenforce 0

If that doesn't help, you may also modify the fedora-livecd-testday.ks file and after %include line add a directive

selinux --permissive

Now the build should run fine.

Further references

• QA Test Day Spin
• How to create and use a Live CD
• How to write the live image to a USB stick.
• How to write the live image to a CD or DVD media.
• How 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)