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Where to find the official bullseye/bkworm liveusb build script?

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pwzhangzz
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Where to find the official bullseye/bkworm liveusb build script?

#1 Post by pwzhangzz »

As we all know, Sid/Bookworm has gone into the freeze stage. While I was anxiously awaiting the weekly built hybrid liveusb iso for "Testing" to finally come out, it may never happen (& I am, understandably, utterly disappointed :( ):

viewtopic.php?t=149947&start=110

We have been using the official Bullseye liveUSB to build a Bookworm liveUSB by:

1. Creating a Bullseye live usb with persistence
2. Removing unnecessary packages
3. Upgrading the Bullseye live usb to Bookworm
4. Customizing the Bookworm liveusb by, among other things, installing desired packages
5. Using mkinitramfs to update initrd.img to correspond to the most recent Linux kernel
6. Using overlay and squashfs-tools to update the Bullseye filesystem.squashfs file

Sometimes we also used the isomaster tool to create the Bookworm iso so as to allow us to run it in VirtualBox without having to reboot to usb stick. (With proper tweaks in GRUB, we can also write the liveusb iso, with persistence, into our system harddisk and boot from there. However, our multi-boot config is already quite complicated, no want any more complication.)

These steps are, needlessly speaking, cumbersome. However, as a relatively recent convert to Debian, I am unable to find the build script for Bullseye. It would be much less cumbersome if we can use an "official" Bullseye build script to directly build a Bookworm liveusb iso.
Last edited by pwzhangzz on 2023-07-03 17:32, edited 2 times in total.

Aki
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Re: Where to find the official bullseye liveusb build script (hybrid weekly built)?

#2 Post by Aki »

Hello,
Probably you are looking for https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianCd
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Re: Where to find the official bullseye liveusb build script?

#3 Post by pwzhangzz »

When I do a default (i.e., without specifying any additional packages) live-build of amd64 sid, the packages listed in the installed:chroot.packages.install will be installed. I am interested in the live-usb Bullseye build script (which should include the file list) to see if I can use the same build packages (for Bullseye) in Bookworm? ? ?

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Re: Where to find the official bullseye liveusb build script?

#4 Post by Aki »

pwzhangzz wrote: 2023-02-09 18:24 [..] I am interested in the live-usb Bullseye build script (which should include the file list) to see if I can use the same build packages (for Bullseye) in Bookworm? ? ?
I suppose you are you interested in:
https://salsa.debian.org/images-team/debian-cd
https://salsa.debian.org/images-team/setup
https://salsa.debian.org/images-team/package-lists

Here are the scripts:
https://salsa.debian.org/images-team/setup

EDIT: note that in these days many changes are in progress for bookworm and higher. See [1] and its follow-up.
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2023 ... 00005.html
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pwzhangzz
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Re: Where to find the official bullseye liveusb build script?

#5 Post by pwzhangzz »

What I need actually is the list of packages that Bullseye (and now Bookworm) installs when making a hybrid live iso, so I can modify the (official/default) list when I run the lb (live build) command to build my own hybrid live iso.

Being a relative newbie to Debian, I am still unable to locate this default package list.

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Re: Where to find the official bullseye liveusb build script?

#6 Post by CwF »

boot the liveusb and ask it...

Code: Select all

$ dpkg --get-selections > packages.txt

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Re: Where to find the official bullseye liveusb build script?

#7 Post by pwzhangzz »

Thanks a whole lot!

The bookworm liveusb iso now includes a filesystem.packages file that lists all the packages installed in the filesystem.squashfs :
ryzen@D12:/mnt/live$ ls -al
total 3169042
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Apr 9 16:10 .
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 Apr 9 16:10 ..
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 71536 Apr 9 16:10 filesystem.packages
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 3045412864 Apr 9 16:10 filesystem.squashfs
-r--r--r-- 2 root root 91506073 Apr 9 16:10 initrd.img
-r--r--r-- 2 root root 91506073 Apr 9 16:10 initrd.img-6.1.0-7-amd64
-r--r--r-- 2 root root 8297504 Mar 19 04:46 vmlinuz
-r--r--r-- 2 root root 8297504 Mar 19 04:46 vmlinuz-6.1.0-7-amd64
This list is the same as the dpkg/apt results (after accounting for the packages added/deleted in my persistent liveusb), and the hybrid iso so created boots and works ok. However, I realized that this list is not very helpful in creating my intended liveusb. Probably a typical newbie naivete; most of the packages that I thought were deleted from the list (for example, fcitx*, uim*, firefox*, some noto fonts, etc)--and thus would not be installed--were actually re-installed into the iso, due to reverse(?) dependency issues. Those packages collectively take up a whopping ~1.5 GB space.

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Re: Where to find the official bullseye liveusb build script?

#8 Post by CwF »

pwzhangzz wrote: 2023-04-20 06:11 Those packages collectively take up a whopping ~1.5 GB space.
Is that 1.5GB of deb packages or the installed size?

In fabricating anything I always use both additive and subtractive methods. One method only, like the results of an unattended install never gets me there. Have you considered massaging this 'persistent liveusb' in a virtual machine and then simply making an image of the result, then imaging that out to whatever device for the task?

I use a 'regular' install on a generic ssd with a usb adapter for 'regular' bios boot machines and it works fine.

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Re: Where to find the official bullseye liveusb build script?

#9 Post by pwzhangzz »

Yes, the 1.5GB extra space is uncompressed. The size of our own hybrid live iso, which we built from scratch, is 2.7GB, vs 3.7GB of the official Bookworm hybrid live iso.

With regard to persistent live usb, as I mentioned in a separate thread:

viewtopic.php?t=149947&start=118
we can merge (via overlay) the official squashfs with the accumulated changes (via persistence) to form a new filesystem.squashfs then burn the whole thing into a new iso.
At present, the above overlay-remixed iso is not installable. The hybrid live iso that we built from scratch is installable, with all the modifications reflected in the installed system.

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Re: Where to find the official bullseye liveusb build script?

#10 Post by pwzhangzz »

pwzhangzz wrote: 2023-04-20 17:37At present, the above overlay-remixed iso is not installable.
"Not installable" only in the traditional sense (i.e., using the calamares debian installer). We have been using the "Google approach" by copying the image of an installed system ("template") to a newly formatted partition of the target machine. All we need to do subsequently was to edit the fstab and the grub.conf files in accordance with the new environment (i.e., the UUID or LABEL of the target partition)and then install the grub boot loader to the EFI partition. This actually works more efficiently than the traditional installer approach. Faster and no post-installation hassle.

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Re: Where to find the official bullseye liveusb build script?

#11 Post by davel »

is it a snapshot script? which making snapshot out of your recent running sysytem to .iso

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Re: Where to find the official bullseye liveusb build script?

#12 Post by pwzhangzz »

As I mentioned in a separate thread, there is a live-build deb package to create hybrid live iso from scratch (repos). But as it is often the case, documentations about this feature are totally out of date. I have summarily described the steps we have taken to build a simple hybrid live bkworm iso:

viewtopic.php?p=768879#p768879

The following are the steps that I used to create a bare bone gnome hybrid sid live iso, as noted above these steps are based from @Debianuser42's script:
mkdir d12 && cd d12
lb config --distribution sid
lb config -a amd64 --archive-areas "main contrib non-free non-free-firmware" --bootappend-live "boot=live components persistence quiet splash" --debian-installer live
echo '! Packages Priority standard' > config/package-lists/standard.list.chroot
echo task-gnome-desktop > config/package-lists/desktop.list.chroot
lb config --initramfs live-boot
sudo lb build
However, I was wondering where I could find documentations that describe the steps of how the Debian live team uses to build the bkworm hybrid live cd? As a relative newbie to Debian I couldn't find it.

Regarding making a (bootable) live image from the currently running system, I have found an open-sourced app called "penguins eggs" quite handy. It has a funny name, but did the job.

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