116 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
116 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
Archiso For Dummies Like Me and You
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- What the hell is Archiso?
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Archiso is a small set of bash scripts that is capable of building fully
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functional Arch Linux based live CDs. It is a very generic tool, so it
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could potentially be used to generate anything from rescue systems,
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to install disks, to special interest live CD systems, and who knows what
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else. Simply put, if it involves Arch on a shiny coaster, it can do it.
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- Alright, so how does one install it?
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First off, Archiso has some dependencies:
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- mkinitcpio
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- cdrkit
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- squashfs-tools
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- aufs2 (only needed in target media)
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- aufs2-util (only needed in target media)
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- devtools for mkarchroot
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- syslinux
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Archiso itself can be installed with the handy dandy included Makefile,
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and the incantation 'make install'.
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- Great, so how do you use this thing?
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The heart and soul of Archiso is mkarchiso. All of its options are
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documented in its usage output, so we won't go into detail here.
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Instead, let's go over the general process.
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The first thing you should probably do is create a directory to work
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in, and cd to it. This'll help keep things organized. Next, you'll want
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to create a mkinitcpio config file that suits your needs. Typically this
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means modifying whatever hooks you want. A typical set of hooks for
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archiso looks something like this:
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HOOKS="base archiso_early udev archiso pata scsi sata usb fw pcmcia filesystems usbinput"
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It's probably worth mentioning that hardware autodetection and things
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of that nature do not belong here. Only what's necessary to get the system
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on its feet, and out of the initcpio really belong here, fancier stuff
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can be done on the booted system anyway.
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You'll also want to create a list of packages you want installed on your
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live CD system. A file full of package names, one-per-line, is the format
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for this. Typically you'll want BASE and a kernel as a bare minimum, but
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you're free to install whatever else you want. This is *great* for
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special interest live CDs, just specify packages you want and gogogo.
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The last item of importance is what are called addons. Basically this
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means any other crap you might want to include on your live CD, including
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binary package repos, special configurations, random files, we don't
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know, be creative. mkarchiso expects them all to be put in a single
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directory, with an fstab-like config file. Currently two types of addons
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are supported, squashfs images that get layered onto the root union, and
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plain directories which can be bind mounted anywhere under the root.
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If you want to add a squashfs union layer:
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- Set up whatever you want to include in a separate directory someplace,
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as if that directory was / . Then run mksquahfs on it, and copy the
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created image to your addons directory.
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- Add an entry to your addons config file (which must be named 'config',
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by the way). Typical squashfs entries look like this:
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live_overlay.sqfs / squashfs
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Where the first component is the path to the image relative to your
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addons directory, the second is the mountpoint (irrelevant for
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squashfs, they will all get layered at /) and of course the third
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component is the type.
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- Be aware that the order of entries on the config matters! Entries will
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be layered on top of one another, later entries are mounted _UNDER_
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earlier entries (an unfortunate counterintuitive result of the way we
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have to mount the unions).
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If you want to add plain directories to bind mount:
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- Set up your directory somewhere, and copy it to your addon directory.
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- Add an entry to your addons config file, example entry:
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core /packages bind
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where the first component is the path to the directory relative to
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your addons directory, the second component is where you'd like it
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bind-mounted relative to the live CD's root filesystem, and the last
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component is the type.
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- How can build installation mediums like provided by Arch Linux?
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- Just follow these next steps as root.
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- Note that mkarchroot is optional, but with it, will ensure to have
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a clean enviroment for building isos.
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- This clean chroot, will take about 400MB (+130MB with all needed tools).
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- After make, max space usage is about 2GB.
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- In last step instead of just execute make, can be more selective:
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Execute "make net-iso" or make "core-iso".
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Do not execute make net-iso after make core-iso, otherwise net-iso
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will be really a core-iso.
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pacman -S devtools --needed
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mkarchroot /tmp/somedir base
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mkarchroot -r bash /tmp/somedir
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# vi/nano /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist and uncomment your prefered mirror.
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pacman -S git squashfs-tools syslinux devtools cdrkit make
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cd /tmp
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git clone git://projects.archlinux.org/archiso.git
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cd archiso/archiso
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make install
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cd ../configs/syslinux-iso/
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make
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Done!
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vim: textwidth=72
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