Hatter
Hatter is a tool used for automating Custom Fedora OS build.
References
Fedora Project Kickstart Files
How to Customize DE and Other Things in kickstart file
Prereq
This assumes that you are running an RPM-based system like Fedora and use dnf for package management, depending how old your software is, the choices for the mock build env may be limited since newer mock has newer cfg file for newer OS.
This also assumes that you have sudo privilege on your system as well as sufficient space for a new build(probably around 15Gb at worst case).
Dependency
To build the image, you will need mock and the kernel modules:
sudo dnf install kernel-modules-$(uname -r) mock
# add user to group mock to be able to use it
sudo usermod -a -G mock ${USER}To test the image with virt-install, you need virtualization tools like qemu, virt-install, which come from the virtualization install group, as well as tigervnc to connect and view the GUI:
sudo dnf groupinstall virtualization
sudo dnf install tigervncMake sure that your GPU has kvm enabled and ready to go.
Usage
The sections below detail the steps to be followed, some of them may need to be done only once.
Configure build and image
The settings.sh contains configurations for both the build env and the image, change it before doing anything else.
For a custom image, you will need your own unflattened kickstart(.ks) file, it's advisable to customize pre-made ks file like here(use the fedora-live-**.ks file for the most complete), there must be a folder called fedora-kickstarts where your main kickstart file and its dependencies reside. Check the kickstart file docs for how to customize.
A good strategy is to clone the fedora-kickstarts repo into the same dir as this repo and then modify it in there.
You can also put all the files you want to include into a folder inside fedora-kickstarts named user_file, it will be available at /usr/share/user_file on the installed distro.
For more info and workflow check the documentation above about making your own kickstart.
cd custom_fedora
nano settings.sh # customize settings
git clone https://pagure.io/fedora-kickstarts fedora-kickstarts
cd fedora-kickstarts
mkdir user_file
cp file_1 user_file
# replace f29 with fedora version you want to base on
# use tags if you want to be sure
git checkout tags/0.29.2
nano my_own_config.ksSet up build env
pre_build.sh will install the necessary programs(like iso image creator, vim for debugging) as well as init the basic mock env.
The mock environment is reused after the first setup so if you ever change it(like moving from fedora 29 to fedora 30, change settings.sh and rerun)
./pre_build.shBuild
DURING BUILD SELINUX WILL ENTER PERMISSIVE MODE, so make sure to prepare accordingly.
While the build script requires sudo, it will spend most of its time as the regular user to minimize security risk. The sudo requirements mainly come from enabling and disabling selinux.
There might be some warnings but if the build keeps going then it should be fine.
The build.sh script is used to create a new build and will output an iso file and build logs in the build folder. Pass in the name of the unflattened target ks file without extension, the name of the output iso will be the same as the ks file.
The build will take quite some time depending on your machine, there will be moments where it feels like the program freezes(low CPU usage and nothing seems to move), just wait patiently and if after like 3 hours and it still stays like that then it probably really froze.
For example, to build a distro based on a kickstart file called fedora-test:
sudo ./build.sh fedora-testTest Build
To launch your image in a virtual machine and have a tigervnc connect to it, do:
build_test.sh path_to_isoYou can adjust various settings like image ram size and cpu core used in the settings.sh file.
Clean Build
If you think there is something wrong with the mock env, run the build_clean script and the pre_build script again.
./build_clean.sh
./pre_build.sh