Using lh_build to test Debian Lenny

Lenny is on his way soon, having already been frozen. For those on a Debian-based system (including Ubuntu), you can easily create yourself a Lenny livecd for testing and bug hunting.

First, you'll need to install the live-helper package:

# aptitude install live-helper

Then configure the various directories needed for the lh-build process:

$ lh_config

If you give no parameters, you will get the default image, currently etch. However, for lenny, we need to pass a few options:

$ lh_config -d lenny -b usb-hdd -p gnome-desktop

This will give us a lenny-based gnome system suitable for a usb drive. Then we'll build the image with lh_build with rooty goodness:

$ sudo lh_build

Wait for a while while it downloads packages and builds an image:

Parallel mksquashfs: Using 2 processors Creating little endian 3.1 filesystem on filesystem.squashfs, block size 131072. [=========================================================================] 100149/100149 100%

Then copy the image onto your usb drive: $ dd if=binary.img of=/path/to/usbdrive If all went well, a reboot with your usb drive will get you a livecd lenny image.