Debian Live

Surrey LUG meet at Nokia Southwood
14th February, 2009
hendry@webconverger.com

WTF! and WHY?

What: Debian Live is a pure Debian framework for building your own Linux distribution.

Why: Several different motivations.

CD, DVDs, USB-stick, Net boot, Web boot

Multiple architectures: 386, 686, amd64

Non-interactive

Easily extensible

Lets get started

1. hendry@x61 ~$ grep live /etc/apt/sources.list
   	deb http://live.debian.net/debian/ .

2. apt-get update && apt-get install live-helper

3. export MIRROR_DEBIAN="http://mirror.webconverger.com/debian/"
   lh_config -b iso -a i386 -p minimal \
    --mirror-bootstrap $MIRROR_DEBIAN --mirror-chroot $MIRROR_DEBIAN

config/ -uration files

hetty:/tmp/lug% ls -l config
total 104
-rw-r--r-- 1 hendry hendry 4170 2009-02-14 12:07 binary
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 binary_debian-installer/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 binary_debian-installer-includes/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 binary_grub/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 binary_local-debs/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 binary_local-hooks/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 binary_local-includes/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 binary_local-packageslists/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 binary_local-udebs/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 binary_rootfs/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 binary_syslinux/
-rw-r--r-- 1 hendry hendry 1647 2009-02-14 12:07 bootstrap
-rw-r--r-- 1 hendry hendry 1445 2009-02-14 12:07 chroot
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 chroot_apt/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 chroot_local-hooks/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 chroot_local-includes/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 chroot_local-packages/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 chroot_local-packageslists/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 chroot_local-patches/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 chroot_local-preseed/
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 chroot_sources/
-rw-r--r-- 1 hendry hendry 2885 2009-02-14 12:07 common
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 includes/
-rw-r--r-- 1 hendry hendry  212 2009-02-14 12:07 source
drwxr-xr-x 2 hendry hendry 4096 2009-02-14 12:07 templates/

And then build!

lh_build 2>&1 | tee myfirstbuild.log

vim /usr/bin/lh_build says:

1. lh_bootstrap
2. lh_chroot
3. lh_binary
4. lh_source

Then test with QEMU or VMWARE or best with actual hardware!

Only live?

persistence too (usb sticks)

debian installer integration - preseeds!

Find out more by asking questions!

Links page has good examples and how to get in contact.

Ideas of your own?

Success storystories - Debian Live powers Webconverger

And you could build Webconverger yourself.