[SOLVED] How Debian ISO are made/built ?

[jrobin28260]

Hi,

For different reasons I would like to rebuild a Debian ISO after having tested some modifications into the code and build parameters

Do somebody knows how Debian ISO are made, what are the steps that are currently used for building the Debian ISO that can be found here : https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/
Is it just build-essentials and a huge Makefile / source directory ? If so, where can we find it ?

I didn't found anything interesting despite my Google searches.

Thank you in advance

[jrobin28260]

Oh, I think I found better than Google, by browsing over available iso
https://salsa.debian.org/images-team/debian-cd

[jrobin28260]

If some people are wondering how to do, and get into this subject, here is the how to :

You can use simple-cdd (apt install simple-cdd) along with xorriso (apt install xorriso, which is not marked as mandatory for simple-cdd but is mandatory). I don't know what are the options but just by typing "simple-cdd" into a dedicated folder in a terminal, you have an ISO of the current version (Debian 9.6 when I'm writing this).

The second option is much more powerful, but needs to get a mirror received/copied with the debian's script on your computer ! It's based on the work of debian-cd's team.
https://salsa.debian.org/images-team/debian-cd

Mounting an already available mirror somewhere with "curlftpfs" unfortunately doesn't work with the image builder : for example curlftpfs anonymous@mirrors.ircam.fr/pub/debian/ /srv/mirror/debian isn't working fine !
In order to use theirs scripts, a FULL COPY OF DEBIAN MIRROR should be used locally, on the SAME DISK AS THE DESTINATION/OUTPUT (in order to have symbolic links working, you can't have a link between 2 separated drives, and symbolic links seems to be created during the process). In order to have this, according to the "For impatient people" howto, I unzipped the file available here (https://www.debian.org/mirror/ftpmirror or https://ftp-master.debian.org/ftpsync.tar.gz) into my already existing home directory (despite the "impatient people how-to" statement, yes I'm a rebel), modified 3 lines the "ftpsync.conf" placing :
TO="/files/destination/example/mirror/"
RSYNC_HOST=debian.proxad.net
RSYNC_PATH="debian"

Then I executed the bin/ftpsync script, waiting my 1000 Mbps home fiber do the job during few hours and it's was good for the next step

Second step is to unzip the debian-cd's team script somewhere with the same already existing user, and mark some of my modifications into the CONF.sh, easy-build.sh, and running the script : it finally worked fine having the full mirror on the same disk as the output folder.

[milomak]

how big is a fully copy of a debian mirror? and i assume this is just of the architecture you require?

[jrobin28260]

Hi, it seems that ftpsync can be used in a way that exclude some architectures, (or even distributions codenames even if it's not recommended when used inside a datacenter or anything else that people around actually uses).
I guess it has some chance to work ?

According to https://www.debian.org/mirror/size it's supposed to be 3133 GiB at the time of writing
But on the disk, I have almost 50% less, it means a 2 Terabyte HDD could be enough, today, even for the full ftpsync !



EDIT : I guess it's because it has buster (testing), stretch (stable), jessie (oldstable) and wheezy (oldoldstable) by default
In my case I would be fine with buster and stretch, x86_64 (or amd64) and ARM 64