Live Systems Manual

About

About this manual

1. About this manual

1.1 For the impatient

1.2 Terms

1.3 Authors

1.4 Contributing to this document

1.4.1 Applying changes

1.4.2 Translation

About the Live Systems Project

2. About the Live Systems Project

2.1 Motivation

2.1.1 What is wrong with current live systems

2.1.2 Why create our own live system?

2.2 Philosophy

2.2.1 Only unchanged packages from Debian "main"

2.2.2 No package configuration of the live system

2.3 Contact

User

Installation

3. Installation

3.1 Requirements

3.2 Installing live-build

3.2.1 From the Debian repository

3.2.2 From source

3.2.3 From 'snapshots'

3.3 Installing live-boot and live-config

3.3.1 From the Debian repository

3.3.2 From source

3.3.3 From 'snapshots'

The basics

4. The basics

4.1 What is a live system?

4.2 Downloading prebuilt images

4.3 Using the web live image builder

4.3.1 Web builder usage and caveats

4.4 First steps: building an ISO hybrid image

4.5 Using an ISO hybrid live image

4.5.1 Burning an ISO image to a physical medium

4.5.2 Copying an ISO hybrid image to a USB stick

4.5.3 Using the space left on a USB stick

4.5.4 Booting the live medium

4.6 Using a virtual machine for testing

4.6.1 Testing an ISO image with QEMU

4.6.2 Testing an ISO image with VirtualBox

4.7 Building and using an HDD image

4.8 Building a netboot image

4.8.1 DHCP server

4.8.2 TFTP server

4.8.3 NFS server

4.8.4 Netboot testing HowTo

4.8.5 Qemu

4.9 Webbooting

4.9.1 Getting the webboot files

4.9.2 Booting webboot images

Overview of tools

5. Overview of tools

5.1 The live-build package

5.1.1 The lb config command

5.1.2 The lb build command

5.1.3 The lb clean command

5.2 The live-boot package

5.3 The live-config package

Managing a configuration

6. Managing a configuration

6.1 Dealing with configuration changes

6.1.1 Why use auto scripts? What do they do?

6.1.2 Use example auto scripts

6.2 Clone a configuration published via Git

Customizing contents

7. Customization overview

7.1 Build time vs. boot time configuration

7.2 Stages of the build

7.3 Supplement lb config with files

7.4 Customization tasks

Customizing package installation

8. Customizing package installation

8.1 Package sources

8.1.1 Distribution, archive areas and mode

8.1.2 Distribution mirrors

8.1.3 Distribution mirrors used at build time

8.1.4 Distribution mirrors used at run time

8.1.5 Additional repositories

8.2 Choosing packages to install

8.2.1 Package lists

8.2.2 Using metapackages

8.2.3 Local package lists

8.2.4 Local binary package lists

8.2.5 Generated package lists

8.2.6 Using conditionals inside package lists

8.2.7 Removing packages at install time

8.2.8 Desktop and language tasks

8.2.9 Kernel flavour and version

8.2.10 Custom kernels

8.3 Installing modified or third-party packages

8.3.1 Using packages.chroot to install custom packages

8.3.2 Using an APT repository to install custom packages

8.3.3 Custom packages and APT

8.4 Configuring APT at build time

8.4.1 Choosing apt or aptitude

8.4.2 Using a proxy with APT

8.4.3 Tweaking APT to save space

8.4.4 Passing options to apt or aptitude

8.4.5 APT pinning

Customizing contents

9. Customizing contents

9.1 Includes

9.1.1 Live/chroot local includes

9.1.2 Binary local includes

9.2 Hooks

9.2.1 Live/chroot local hooks

9.2.2 Boot-time hooks

9.2.3 Binary local hooks

9.3 Preseeding Debconf questions

Customizing run time behaviours

10. Customizing run time behaviours

10.1 Customizing the live user

10.2 Customizing locale and language

10.3 Persistence

10.3.1 The persistence.conf file

10.3.2 Using more than one persistence store

10.3.3 Using persistence with encryption

Customizing the binary image

11. Customizing the binary image

11.1 Bootloaders

11.2 ISO metadata

Customizing Debian Installer

12. Customizing Debian Installer

12.1 Types of Debian Installer

12.2 Customizing Debian Installer by preseeding

12.3 Customizing Debian Installer content

Project

Contributing to the project

13. Contributing to the project

13.1 Making changes

Reporting bugs

14. Reporting bugs

14.1 Known issues

14.2 Rebuild from scratch

14.3 Use up-to-date packages

14.4 Collect information

14.5 Isolate the failing case if possible

14.6 Use the correct package to report the bug against

14.6.1 At build time while bootstrapping

14.6.2 At build time while installing packages

14.6.3 At boot time

14.6.4 At run time

14.7 Do the research

14.8 Where to report bugs

Coding Style

15. Coding Style

15.1 Compatibility

15.2 Indenting

15.3 Wrapping

15.4 Variables

15.5 Miscellaneous

Procedures

16. Procedures

16.1 Major Releases

16.2 Point Releases

16.2.1 Last Point Release of a Debian Release

16.2.2 Point release announcement template

Git repositories

17. Git repositories

17.1 Handling multiple repositories

Examples

Examples

18. Examples

18.1 Using the examples

18.2 Tutorial 1: A default image

18.3 Tutorial 2: A web browser utility

18.4 Tutorial 3: A personalized image

18.4.1 First revision

18.4.2 Second revision

18.5 A VNC Kiosk Client

18.6 A base image for a 128MB USB key

18.7 A localized GNOME desktop and installer

Appendix

Style guide

19. Style guide

19.1 Guidelines for authors

19.1.1 Linguistic features

19.1.2 Procedures

19.2 Guidelines for translators

19.2.1 Translation hints

Metadata

SiSU Metadata, document information