I found this bookmark:
how to manually install a lenny/sid live CD
Postby MeanDean » 2007-09-06 20:46
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=18845But I can't find a similar one for creating a live-CD from scratch. Searched for authors, meandean, refracta and gnudude. Maybe under another name?I did find at least one that did it with live-helper, but I'm pretty sure there was one that had the raw system commands to copy the system, squash it and make the iso, and I'm pretty sure there were older discussions about doing it with live-helper.
create a debian live image using live-helper
Postby refracta » 2009-12-07 01:38
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=47489Right now, I can't find the first scripts I wrote. They were simple bash scripts that ran the commands that Dean gave me, with minimal user interface and no sanity checks.
Use of excludes predates any of the bash versions I wrote.
The description in the comments is old. There are a lot more options now. I'll have to look through the code and the config file to rewrite that part.
I know that remastersys has two modes - one for backup and one for a distributable copy. I haven't looked at that code closely enough to know what things get done differently, and I surely can't decide what should be included or excluded from the copy. The default settings in refractasnapshot are somewhere between those two uses, and it's up to the user to tweak those settings for their own needs. For example, ~/.gnupg and ~/.ssh are excluded so that authorization keys and the like are excluded, but whatever files are in the user's home are not excluded.
Oh, I just had an idea about that - it would be possible to use (/)etc/skel to make the copy of the user's home in the live image. That would strip out all the personal stuff. But I'm not sure I want to go that way. I really prefer the user to decide what to include or exclude. I'm open to suggestions on this point.