Black Lab Image Creator Project public offering pulled offline

Black Lab Image Creator 1.4 will not be making a public release. As of today, we are rolling Black Lab Image Creator into our Enterprise Linux offerings.   Why are we doing this?  Lack of public contributions.  This project has garnered 0 external developers, even with the source code available.  That was very important to us and why we released the source code.  It garnered 0 in public donations and at this point even the Kickstarter has been a failure with no backers and no activity.  So without funding and without public contribution, the best thing for us is to pull this tool internally and it will continue to be enhanced for Ubuntu-GNOME and Xubuntu which comprise the base of our own Linux distribution.

Anyone who wants the source code along with the binary distribution can donate to help support the project for $50.00 USD using the Donate button and we will send you a copy of the binary installer and source code.  Once your payment clears I will send it to you.  We will continue to make announcements regarding our progress on this site.

Black Lab Image Creator 1.3 released

Today we are pleased to announce the release of Black Lab Image Creator 1.3, with this release we have fixed the following issues.

1.  Ubuntu 14.04 support is complete
2.  Mint 17  support is complete
3.  kernel wont sync issue - This is due to the filesystem being btrfs during the compilation

4. Deb package now provided

With this newest release you can now build Unity and KDE desktops, here are some issues that need to be addressed and before you file any bug reports please follow these know issues.

- The build system must have an ext4 filesystem.  The default btrfs filesystem that Ubuntu uses WILL NOT WORK.  You can install your image on any filesystem you wish but the build system MUST BE EXT4.  One of our contributors is working on btrfs support but we have no arrival date as of yet.

- If you get a command not found when running blacklabimager you must run the following commands

sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/BlackLabImager
sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/BlackLabImager-skelcopy

- If you get a home directory size error you must bring the size down below 4 gigs.  This is a left over issue from  remastersys.

- Your image presents you with a login screen:  Leave the user name as is and click on login, no password is necessary

To download Black Lab Image Creator visit our sourceforge page where the .deb and source files are available

Download Black Lab Image Creator

Kickstarter launched

We have started a project on Kickstarter to help fund development of Black Lab Image Creator.  With the funding we plan to continue to develop Black Lab Image Creator and hopefully get some of the bugs fixed that currently plague us.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1799080619/black-lab-image-creator

Remastering Ubuntu 14.04

There have been some people who have complained about the functionality on 14.04 so we have tracked down the problems and here are some workarounds:

1.  You must be using the ext4 filesystems - 14.04 uses BTRFS by default, BTRFS was created after Black Lab Image Creator, what happens is that it doesnt know how to appropriately count the inodes in the BTRFS filesystem.  Before you ask, no, I dont intend to implement BTRFS support, I dont have the motivation or time to do this.  We did implement XFS support in 1.3 because of the commercial release thats in Black Lab Linux for Enterprise so customers can clone their Red Hat 7 and Oracle 7 installs so we filtered that down to 1.3.  If you are knowledgeable enough to use this tool, then you are knowledge enough to format your drive in ext4 or in 1.3 XFS.

2.  Do not deb copy the 1.3 install in Black Lab Linux 5.1 - ALPHA, it is tuned to Black Lab Linux and will not work on any other distribution, please wait for the official release next week.  Do not deb copy from BLL 5.1 Alpha and then cuss me out that it doesnt work, you have been warned.

3.  If you use sudo BlackLabImager disk in 1.3 it uses destructive partitioning, it will ignore any partition requests that you may make to the installer.  Its designed to do this.  This is for Red Hat 7 and Oracle 7.  To remaster Red Hat 7 or Oracle 7 you must do it from a LiveCD session rather than from an installed system.  It will break.

4.  Black Lab Image Creator 1.3 will work with Black Lab Linux 5.1 onwards and Ubuntu 14.04.  Do not use it for Ubuntu 12.04.  Ubuntu 12.04 users should use Black Lab Image Creator 1.1 or the legacy remastersys 3.04.  This is because some of the packages have changed in 14.04 and dont exist in 12.04 if you use remastersys or BLIC 1.1 in Ubuntu 14.04 make sure you install discover, sudo apt-get install discover.

5.  EFI support - No, quit asking.  Its not gonna happen.  Disable secureboot, or install with Secureboot disabled and install the signed kernels from the installed system.  I have no motivation or time to implement UEFI support.

Black Lab Image Creator 1.3 coming in 2 weeks

Hey folks,

We have finished on the latest round of bug fixes for Black Lab Image Creator 1.3 and will be releasing an updated bundle on that day.  We are also working on packaging in Deb format to make the installation easier.