Debian Live Manual

About

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

2. About the Debian Live 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

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'

4. The basics

4.1 What is a live system?
4.2 First steps: building an ISO hybrid image
4.3 Using an ISO hybrid live image
4.3.1 Burning an ISO image to a physical medium
4.3.2 Copying an ISO hybrid image to a USB stick
4.3.3 Booting the live media
4.4 Using a virtual machine for testing
4.4.1 Testing an ISO image with QEMU
4.4.2 Testing an ISO image with virtualbox-ose
4.5 Building an HDD image
4.6 Using an HDD image
4.6.1 Testing an HDD image with Qemu
4.6.2 Using the space left on a USB stick
4.7 Building a netboot image
4.7.1 DHCP server
4.7.2 TFTP server
4.7.3 NFS server
4.7.4 Netboot testing HowTo
4.7.5 Qemu
4.7.6 VMWare Player

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

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

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

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 Desktop and language tasks
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

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

10. Customizing run time behaviours

10.1 Customizing the live user
10.2 Customizing locale and language
10.3 Persistence
10.3.1 The live-persistence.conf file
10.3.2 Using more than one persistence store

11. Customizing the binary image

11.1 Bootloader
11.2 ISO metadata

12. Customizing Debian Installer

12.1 Types of Debian Installer
12.2 Customizing Debian Installer by preseeding
12.3 Customizing Debian Installer content

Project

13. Reporting bugs

13.1 Known issues
13.2 Rebuild from scratch
13.3 Use up-to-date packages
13.4 Collect information
13.5 Isolate the failing case if possible
13.6 Use the correct package to report the bug against
13.6.1 At build time whilst bootstrapping
13.6.2 At build time whilst installing packages
13.6.3 At boot time
13.6.4 At run time
13.7 Do the research
13.8 Where to report bugs

14. Coding Style

14.1 Compatibility
14.2 Indenting
14.3 Wrapping
14.4 Variables
14.5 Miscellaneous

15. Procedures

15.1 Udeb Uploads
15.2 Major Releases
15.3 Point Releases
15.3.1 Last Point Release of a Debian Release
15.3.2 Point release announcement template

Examples

16. Examples

16.1 Using the examples
16.2 Tutorial 1: A standard image
16.3 Tutorial 2: A web browser utility
16.4 Tutorial 3: A personalized image
16.4.1 First revision
16.4.2 Second revision
16.5 A VNC Kiosk Client
16.6 A base image for a 128M USB key
16.7 A localized KDE desktop and installer

Appendix

17. Style guide

17.1 Guidelines for authors
17.1.1 Linguistic features
17.1.2 Procedures
17.2 Guidelines for translators
17.2.1 Translation hints

Debian Live Manual

Project

14. Coding Style

This chapter documents the coding style used in live-boot and others.

14.1 Compatibility

  • Don't use syntax or semantics that are unique to the Bash shell. For example, the use of array constructs.
  • Only use the POSIX subset - for example, use $(foo) over `foo`.
  • You can check your scripts with 'sh -n' and 'checkbashisms'.
  • Make sure all shell code runs with 'set -e'.
  • 14.2 Indenting

  • Always use tabs over spaces.
  • 14.3 Wrapping

  • Generally, lines are 80 chars at maximum.
  • Use the "Linux style" of line breaks:
  • Bad:

    if foo; then
             bar
    fi

    Good:

    if foo
    then
             bar
    fi

  • The same holds for functions:
  • Bad:

    Foo () {
             bar
    }

    Good:

    Foo ()
    {
             bar
    }

    14.4 Variables

  • Variables are always in capital letters.
  • Variables that used in lb config always start with LB_ prefix.
  • Internal temporary variables in live-build should start with the _LB_ prefix.
  • Local variables start with live-build __LB_ prefix.
  • Variables in connection to a boot parameter in live-config start with LIVE_.
  • All other variables in live-config start with _ prefix.
  • Use braces around variables; e.g. write ${FOO} instead of $FOO.
  • Always protect variables with quotes to respect potential whitespaces: write "${FOO}" not ${FOO}.
  • For consistency reasons, always use quotes when assigning values to variables:
  • Bad:

    FOO=bar

    Good:

    FOO="bar"

  • If multiple variables are used, quote the full expression:
  • Bad:

    if [ -f "${FOO}"/foo/"${BAR}"/bar ]
    then
             foobar
    fi

    Good:

    if [ -f "${FOO}/foo/${BAR}/bar" ]
    then
             foobar
    fi

    14.5 Miscellaneous

  • Use "|" (without the surround quotes) as a separator in calls to sed, e.g. "sed -e 's|foo|bar|'" (without "").
  • Don't use the test command for comparisons or tests, use "[" "]" (without ""); e.g. "if [ -x /bin/foo ]; ..." and not "if test -x /bin/foo; ...".
  • Use case wherever possible over test, as it's easier to read and faster in execution.
  • Use capitalized names for functions to limit messing with the users environment.