Pages

Black Lab Imager Creator

The price is $50.00 USD with e-mail support and 1 year of free updates.





Sunday, July 20, 2014

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

24 comments:

  1. What About Ext3 file system on Ubuntu 14.04 ? is it also supported or just Ext4?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks , installed it but I dont see any icon in mrnu, so is it runned through command ? some basic notes/commands regarding this image creator would be of some help.

      Delete
    2. It doesnt have a GUI at all it has to be done through the command line.

      You can get the list of commands from the sourceforge page

      http://sourceforge.net/projects/os4systemimage/files/blacklabimagecreator-commandlist.txt/download

      Delete
    3. Thanks I will check it out and make a test remastered image and report back

      Delete
    4. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    5. sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/blacklabimager-skelcopy

      Delete
    6. thanks Rebert Dohnert this command worked flawlessly , previously I tried all options i knew but the script was not getting executable

      Delete
    7. so lightdm is also one for the requirement as seen here from my log

      ~$ sudo BlackLabImager backup custom.iso
      grep: /etc/init.d/blacklabimager-firstboot: No such file or directory

      System Backup Mode Selected
      Enabling blacklabimager-firstboot
      Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/blacklabimager-firstboot ...
      /etc/rc0.d/K20blacklabimager-firstboot -> ../init.d/blacklabimager-firstboot
      /etc/rc1.d/K20blacklabimager-firstboot -> ../init.d/blacklabimager-firstboot
      /etc/rc6.d/K20blacklabimager-firstboot -> ../init.d/blacklabimager-firstboot
      /etc/rc2.d/S20blacklabimager-firstboot -> ../init.d/blacklabimager-firstboot
      /etc/rc3.d/S20blacklabimager-firstboot -> ../init.d/blacklabimager-firstboot
      /etc/rc4.d/S20blacklabimager-firstboot -> ../init.d/blacklabimager-firstboot
      /etc/rc5.d/S20blacklabimager-firstboot -> ../init.d/blacklabimager-firstboot
      Checking filesystem type of the Working Folder
      /home/blacklabimage/remasteredsys is on a ext3 filesystem
      Making sure popularity contest is not installed
      Installing the Ubiquity KDE frontend
      Lightdm not setup properly. You must set your default desktop with lightdm prior to remastering

      Delete
    8. Found a fix here

      http://www.nemotos.net/?p=827

      and from this fix i commented out line 245 in BlackLabImager and now the remaster making has started

      Delete
    9. Remaster failed with classic error I noticed on remastersys on ubuntu 14.04 last time , nothing different error at all

      $ sudo BlackLabImager backup custom.iso

      System Backup Mode Selected
      Enabling blacklabimager-firstboot
      System start/stop links for /etc/init.d/blacklabimager-firstboot already exist.
      Checking filesystem type of the Working Folder
      /home/blacklabimage/remasteredsys is on a ext3 filesystem
      Making sure popularity contest is not installed
      Installing the Ubiquity KDE frontend
      Checking if the /home/blacklabimage/remasteredsys folder has been created
      Creating /home/blacklabimage/remasteredsys folder tree
      Creating /home/blacklabimage/remasteredsys/ISOTMP folder tree
      Copying /var and /etc to temp area and excluding extra files ... this will take a while so be patient
      Cleaning up files not needed for the live in /home/blacklabimage/remasteredsys/dummysys
      Making sure adduser and autologin functions of casper are set properly
      Copying memtest86+ for the live system
      Creating isolinux setup for the live system
      Checking the ARCH of the system and setting the README.diskdefines file
      Creating filesystem.manifest and filesystem.manifest-desktop
      Excluding folder from the backup that will cause issues
      Copying the install icon to the desktop of saleem
      Creating the casper.conf file.
      Checking and setting user-setup-apply for the live system
      Setting up casper and ubiquity options for backup mode
      Creating a new initial ramdisk for the live system
      Copying your kernel and initrd for the livecd
      Creating filesystem.squashfs ... this will take a while so be patient
      Parallel mksquashfs: Using 2 processors
      Creating 4.0 filesystem on /home/blacklabimage/remasteredsys/ISOTMP/casper/filesystem.squashfs, block size 1048576.
      [=| ] 3183/137013 2%Updating the blacklabimager.log
      cat: /home/blacklabimage/remasteredsys/tmpusers: No such file or directory
      Cleaning up the install icon from the user desktops
      Removing the ubiquity frontend as it has been included and is not needed on the normal system
      ls: cannot access /home/blacklabimage/remasteredsys/ISOTMP/casper/filesystem.squashfs: No such file or directory
      /usr/bin/BlackLabImager: line 647: [: : integer expression expected
      Calculating the installed filesystem size for the installer
      Could not open /home/blacklabimage/remasteredsys/ISOTMP/casper/filesystem.squashfs, because No such file or directory
      Removing blacklabimager-firstboot from system startup
      Removing any system startup links for /etc/init.d/blacklabimager-firstboot ...
      /etc/rc0.d/K20blacklabimager-firstboot
      /etc/rc1.d/K20blacklabimager-firstboot
      /etc/rc2.d/S20blacklabimager-firstboot
      /etc/rc3.d/S20blacklabimager-firstboot
      /etc/rc4.d/S20blacklabimager-firstboot
      /etc/rc5.d/S20blacklabimager-firstboot
      /etc/rc6.d/K20blacklabimager-firstboot
      The filesystem.squashfs filesystem is missing. Either there was a problem creating the compressed filesystem or you are trying to run sudo blacklabimager dist iso before sudo blacklabimager dist cdfs

      Delete
    10. Found a useful remark from AV Linux developer, former remastersys user here which means the kernel settings have something to do with this error

      http://www.remastersys.com/forums/index.php?topic=3401.0

      Delete
    11. I think I finally found the reason for this whole mess. It should be included in the above mentioned DO NOT list by the developers of BlackLab Image creator. DO NOT use bleachbit to clean your system before making a remaster it creates a ghost folder of a weird name and with huge amount of conents ( in my case it was named as JpuNGnR8Tw ) . This folder with large amount of waste files left over by bleachbit will not leave sufficient space for remastering process and will kill the process in the middle. If you have such a folder remove it first with the command sudo rm -r JpuNGnR8Tw and then proceed with the remastering later. My remaster is in making , whatever the results I will post here later

      Delete
    12. The ISO was finally created but it failed to boot , the setup was un able to load some file and everytime i was thrown into a terminal , I know this is not much of an info to provide but this is what I got myself , im sort of disappointed now that after so many efforts still the blabimage creator failed for me.

      Delete
    13. Made another remaster and got the same error , here is the error i got

      http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1603807

      im just wondering if aufs support is not provided by all latest stock kernels how are balck lab people getting this support ? are they using some custom made kernels?

      Delete
    14. I finally managed to make a successful remaster of my Kubuntu 14.04.1 with kernel 3.13.0-32-generic , anyone who gets the error given above please install aufs-tools first and then you will be good to go . Thanks to Black Lab Software Team for making it possible that we can create a working remaster from Ubuntu 14.04 once again although they are a bit unhappy by not being supported by community but anyone reading this page will benefit from it since I have tried to report all the issues I faced and also offered the fixes , I hope Black Lab Software Team will appreciate my small contribution for offering possible fixes for the issues faced during remaster. Now I can distribute copy of my remaster to my friends and colleagues :) infact im posting this comment from my remaster atm which I wrote to my USB.

      Regards

      Delete
  2. ext3, ext4, XFS are all supported. We havent tested on Reiser or ext2, also fat and NTFS are not supported

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Ubuntu spins that use BTRFS are Kubuntu 14.04, Ultimate Edition and Ubuntu 14.04

    ReplyDelete
  4. When I try to create an Xubuntu respin I get an LightDM error: Lightdm not setup properly. You must set your default desktop with lightdm prior to remastering.

    How can I fix that?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Never mind. Found it. I changed directory to /etc/lightdm and I created a symbolic link using: sudo ln -s lightdm.conf.d/10-xubuntu.conf lightdm.conf

      Now It works :)

      Delete
    2. This command did not work for me i tried these two

      ~$ sudo ln -s lightdm.conf.d/10-kubuntu.conf lightdm.conf
      $ sudo ln -s lightdm.conf.d/10-xubuntu.conf lightdm.conf

      still getting error

      Lightdm not setup properly. You must set your default desktop with lightdm prior to remastering

      Delete
    3. Try doing it from a virtual console, Ctrl-Alt-F2, without an Xsession, I just tried and I get the same error when I try to do it from Konsole but I dont get that error from a virtual console.

      Delete
    4. We use this to build the Black Lab Linux 6 product and we dont have this issue but I always build from a virtual console anyway so that may be why it wasnt discovered.

      Delete
    5. I think the fix I posted above can be adopted in next release of BlackLab Image creator.

      Delete
  5. With 14.04.1 Kubuntu stopped using the BTRFS filesystem as the default so you dont have to do do custom partitioning .

    ReplyDelete