Below are my notes from when I was trying to make a Ubuntu LiveCD which has SpinRite built in... Only problem is... It doesn't work on the Mac. It should run fine on a Desktop PC, but that wasn't my goal. I will share my efforts though for people who are not on Mac.

I'm starting work on making another hack which will take the recovery drive of your Mac, make a new DMG, and add VirtualBox and SpinRite to it so that you can boot your Mac off a USB Stick or CD with SpinRite. I will also provide code and my notes for doing this.

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Video of me making the LiveCD to help some people who do not understand my notes.

I first installed Ubuntu from http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop in a new virtual machine in parallels. Updated Ubuntu before installing Parallels Tools (which allows copy/paste between Mac and Ubuntu). Installed Parallels Tools and did the following. NOTE: In Parallels, if you install Parallels Tools before updating... Ubuntu will break to where you have to re-install.

Open terminal.

Install dependencies.

sudo apt-get install gfxboot-dev subversion libfribidi-bin squashfs-tools

Checkout and start GUI

svn checkout svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/uck/code/trunk uck-code
cd uck-code/uck
./uck-gui

Follow steps and when you get "Do you want to customize the CD manually during building." Choose yes.

When you are asked to run the console, choose yes and a new terminal window chrooted into the Live CD build directory. Remove unneeded things which eats space (optional).

apt-get purge account-plugin-aim account-plugin-facebook account-plugin-flickr account-plugin-google account-plugin-icons account-plugin-identica  account-plugin-jabber account-plugin-salut account-plugin-twitter account-plugin-windows-live account-plugin-yahoo brasero brasero-cdrkit brasero-common empathy empathy-common gwibber gwibber-service gwibber-service-facebook gwibber-service-identica gwibber-service-twitter libreoffice-base-core libreoffice-calc libreoffice-common libreoffice-core libreoffice-draw libreoffice-emailmerge libreoffice-gnome libreoffice-gtk libreoffice-help-en-us libreoffice-impress libreoffice-math libreoffice-ogltrans libreoffice-pdfimport libreoffice-presentation-minimizer libreoffice-presenter-console libreoffice-style-human libreoffice-style-tango libreoffice-writer popularity-contest rhythmbox rhythmbox-data rhythmbox-mozilla rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder rhythmbox-plugin-magnatune rhythmbox-plugin-zeitgeist rhythmbox-plugins rhythmbox-ubuntuone telepathy-gabble telepathy-haze telepathy-idle telepathy-indicator telepathy-logger telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut thunderbird thunderbird-globalmenu thunderbird-gnome-support transmission-common transmission-gtk ubiquity ubiquity-casper ubiquity-frontend-gtk ubiquity-slideshow-ubuntu ubiquity-ubuntu-artwork ubuntuone-client ubuntuone-client ubuntuone-client-gnome ubuntuone-control-panel ubuntuone-control-panel-qt ubuntuone-couch uno-libs3 usb-creator-common usb-creator-gtk vino
rm /usr/share/applications/ubuntu-amazon-default.desktop /usr/share/applications/UbuntuOneMusiconeubuntucom.desktop

Remove games (optional).

apt-get purge aisleriot gnome-games-data gnome-mahjongg gnome-sudoku gnomine

Install Dependancies

apt-get install libqt4-opengl libsdl1.2debian linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Install VirtualBox. Go to https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads and find one for your version of linux.

wget {URL}
dpkg -i virtualbox*.deb
rm virtualbox*.deb

Download my files for virtualbox that allows you to run SpinRite.

wget http://mrgeckosmedia.net/spinrite.tgz
tar -xzf spinrite.tgz
mkdir -p /home/ubuntu/
mv /spinrite/* /home/ubuntu/
chmod 755 /home/ubuntu/Desktop/SpinRite.sh
rm -R spinrite spinrite.tgz

Link desktop items for easy start of programs.

ln -s /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop /home/ubuntu/Desktop/
ln -s /usr/share/applications/gedit.desktop /home/ubuntu/Desktop/
ln -s /usr/share/applications/gnome-terminal.desktop /home/ubuntu/Desktop/
ln -s /usr/share/applications/gparted.desktop /home/ubuntu/Desktop/
ln -s /usr/share/applications/gnome-system-monitor.desktop /home/ubuntu/Desktop/
ln -s /usr/share/applications/baobab.desktop /home/ubuntu/Desktop/
ln -s /usr/share/applications/gnome-disks.desktop /home/ubuntu/Desktop/
ln -s /usr/share/applications/virtualbox.desktop /home/ubuntu/Desktop/

If you kept the games (optional).

ln -s /usr/share/applications/freecell.desktop /home/ubuntu/Desktop/
ln -s /usr/share/applications/gnome-mahjongg.desktop /home/ubuntu/Desktop/
ln -s /usr/share/applications/gnome-sudoku.desktop /home/ubuntu/Desktop/
ln -s /usr/share/applications/gnomine.desktop /home/ubuntu/Desktop/
ln -s /usr/share/applications/sol.desktop /home/ubuntu/Desktop/

Fix permissions

chmod +x /home/ubuntu/Desktop/*.desktop

In another terminal window from the customization console, run SpinRite.exe in wine to create a bootable iso and copy that iso to the remaster.

sudo cp SpinRite.iso $HOME/tmp/remaster-root/home/ubuntu/

Go back to the customization console and run exit. When asked, choose continue build.

When done, ether burn to disk or copy to USB Stick.

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