Updating and Customizing Back|Track

[snafu777]

Ladies/Gents,

I've had a request about trimming some fat from the distro. Here's what I've done to keep mine as small as possible.

Ideas:

• Scroll through the list of installed packages, and find stuff you don't need/want. This can be accomplished in a myriad of ways, however I've found dpkg --list to be the most appropriate

  dpkg --list > installed_stuff
  less installed_stuff

  From there make a mental/written note to yerself regarding the things that you might not use and begin to experiment with apt-get purging them.
  Note--> Be advised though, some of the packages are so integral to the distro, you MIGHT break yer distro by doing so, take yer time when doing this.
  Note--> When apt-get purging, sometimes you will find that it removes other packages you want. Try apt-get purge nmap and you will see it removes pbnj, saintexploit, etc. So definately make sure you pay attention to what is being removed so you can add it back if wanted.
  Note --> As well, whenever you apt-get purge something, you might see the apt-get autoremove option tossed at ya advising you of what was once needed, but is no longer needed, and by simply apt-get autoremoving, you can clean it up. To avoid this simply do the apt-get autoremove, and then apt-get install said named packages...
• deborphan rocks for finding unneeded things that have been abandoned by their parent application when it has been uninstalled.

  apt-get install deborphan
  -do yer purging....
  deborphan | xargs apt-get -y remove --purge
  -repeat this a couple times....  It doesn't always kill on the first hit.

• Unneeded craziness...
  - /opt/metasploit/msf3.zip
  I have no idea why this exists, it is a 113MB file.... I'm going to ask in IRC whats up with it, hopefully its addressed....
  
  - linux-image-3.2.4
  Be sure to apt-get purge this one, not sure why it is on the new ISO, but once again, I will ask via IRC what's up with it.
• /var/cache/apt/archives
  This directory is where all .debs are downloaded to after an apt-get install. Once the requested package has been downloaded, make sure to clean out this directory to include /var/cache/apt/archives/partial. You do not need these files on the new ISO unless u want to maintain the .deb for specific reasons....

Cheers!

[bugme]

thanks! just a little tip...i found extremely useful use the disk usage analyzer utility that comes preinstalled on bt5r1-2, just analyze the file system and check easily and in a very nice way all the programs installed and the space consumed ordered by size!

[snafu777]

Ladies/Gents,

Version 1.1 of iso_mod.sh is out and about in the wild. Changes to note are:

• The script has now been geared more towards all distros of Linux. It is in the beta testing phase awaiting input from other users as to the scripts success

I've modified the script in various ways. It is my hope now that other distros can be modified with this script. Of course, FULL support for Back|Track has,is,always will be provided.

Svn up and grab a copy!


Cheers!

[samiux]

Snafu777,

I tried to remaster Ubuntu 11.10 on a 11.10 with your script iso_mod.sh. Even I stop the procps before issuing "exit" command, the remaster failed due to "proc busy" error. I have updated the kernel and some of the packages.

Any idea?

[snafu777]

samiux,

I have not yet tried updating a kernel and have no idea what would happen. Can you try again without the kernel update and see what happens? Since a kernel update is a pretty big deal, i figure starting off small with perhaps

touch /foo.test

would be a step in the right direction regarding changing of the ISO. My next step after successfully creating that would be to see about apt-get installs, then perhaps some apt-get upgrades, followed lastly by an upgrade to a kernel, but only doing one step at a time, not all at once, therefore seeing what works and how far documenting the progress each time without losing all the work you have done all at once.


Please write back and let me know whats up.

Sorry for the delay, been very busy...


Cheers!