To have more flexibility in the kernel used in LiveCDs, I added a new feature to Catalyst : the possibility to patch kernels just before they are compiled in livecd-stage2. I did this because I needed to add squashfs to kernel sources that don't have them in (hardened-dev-sources), and found no other easy way. The patch adds an optional "boot/kernel/xxx/patch" feature to the livecd-stage2 specfile. It should contain the path to a patch that would apply cleanly using "patch -p1 -d /usr/src/linux". Patch applies cleanly on catalyst-1.0.9. I can submit a Catalyst documentation diff too, if you need it.
Created attachment 41356 [details, diff] catalyst-1.0.9-kpatchsupport.patch The Catalyst patch
i really do not see the need for catalyst to do this. if we allow this for kernels, then why not for the rest of the packages that are built via catalyst? i would rather that the kernel itself is patched the proper way.
John: The problem is that kernel maintainers won't accept patches that are necessary to catalyst but not to the scope of the kernel. I think I'll have difficulties getting hardened-dev-sources to include squashfs for example, yet I need the squashfs patch to build an hardened LiveCD. So I figured out the simplest way was to add in Catalyst the capability to add LiveCD-needed kernel patches, rather than try to convince kernel maintainers it is necessary to include them or just limit the choices to kernels that have squashfs included...
You could use zisofs and try to convince the kernel maintainers. Who is the maintainer for hardened-dev-sources?
I managed to convince solar to convince h-d-s to include the patch :)
Sweet
