I recently showed you how to create Ubuntu Server images using vmbuilder, but promised to also show how to use live-helper. Without further ado...
Start by installing live-helper.
sudo apt-get install live-helperIf you want a splash image for the boot loader, grab one. Here's an example
wget https://launchpadlibrarian.net/39290722/byobu_192.pngNext, we use lh_config with a lengthy set of options, to build:
- disable apt recommends (keep the image small)
- build 64 bit (for large memory instances)
- enable main and universe
- build a usb disk style image
- append a few kernel options (like "toram" and "noprompt")
- use the syslinux bootloader
- build from ubuntu lucid
- use the linux-image-server kernel
- add a few packages (like "byobu" and "vim")
- add your boot splash image
- set the boot timeout to 2 seconds
- use aufs
- set the root disk size to 2GB
/usr/share/live-helper/helpers/lh_config \
--apt-recommends false \
--architecture amd64 \
--archive-areas "main universe" \
--binary-image usb-hdd \
--bootappend-live "toram persistent noprompt" \
--bootloader syslinux \
--distribution lucid \
--exposed-root true \
--initramfs casper \
--linux-flavours server \
--linux-packages linux-image \
--mode ubuntu \
--packages "byobu vim" \
--syslinux-timeout 2 \
--syslinux-splash ./byobu_192.png \
--union-filesystem aufs \
--virtual-root-size 2000
Configure any "local hooks". These are scripts of your design that can modify your image inside of the chroot.
cat >config/chroot_local-hooks/01-byobu.sh <<EOF
#!/bin/sh
ln -sf /usr/bin/byobu-launch /etc/profile.d/Z98-byobu.sh
EOF
chmod +x config/chroot_local-hooks/01-byobu.sh
Now, you can perform the build. This takes about 8 minutes for me on my laptop, with an SSD and local mirror.
Finally, test your image. You can run it in KVM.
sudo /usr/share/live-helper/helpers/lh_build
Alternatively, you could write this directly to a hard drive, as an install. Note that this will overwrite ALL data on that drive. Use with great care!!!
kvm -m 512 -hda binary.img
dd if=binary.img of=/dev/sda
Enjoy!
:-Dustin
Incredibly useful! Thanks, Dustin.
ReplyDeleteHi Dustin,
ReplyDeleteApologies in advanced for posting this question here. You can definitely delete it after a few days have passed by.
I have decided to contact you because you seem to be a guru of Ubuntu, and -having read a previous post of you on the matter- I figured you could probably provide me with sensible answers.
Im not totally sure what happened last night on my Lucid, but somehow my gnome-power-manager broke-down, which meant I couldn't access the X-server.
I read a few pages of documentation through my Windows partition, but unfortunately nothing that was being said there solved my problem.
After a few hours of fiddling-around, I decided to reinstall an image, under a different username, with the idea to later copy the contents of home to my new home (as I dont want to have to re-do the whole look of the gnome environment).
But to my surprise (I didnt know this was happening until now), I realised that ubuntu has encrypted my content automatically, so that when I logged in under my new username I cannot access my previous home folder.
I read a bit about it and it says its been done through ecrypts, so I got in the process of manually mounting it to /home/myprevioususername/Private but it doesnt let me do it. Heres why:
if I use ecryptfs-add-passphrase --fnek and then
sudo ecryptfs-mount-private /home/myprevioususername/.Private /home/myprevioususername/Private
I enter the login passphrase (when I first installed Lucid I remember getting a demand for a passphrase -I thought it was supposed to be the same as the login password so I duplicated it) and then it says
"insterted auto tok with sig [digits&letters] into the user session keyring", and then
"fopen: no such file or directory"
ugh!
I also tried the option
sudo mount -t ecryptfs /home/previoususername/.Private /home/prev.../Private
I go through the options and then it says
"error mounting eCryptfs: [-2] No such file or directory"
same error?
Am I doing somethign wrong? Can I recover the data from my old username home folder?
Thanks a mil!
Regards,
Alberto
Oh, I just read your notice on Launchpad. Will move my enquiry there.
ReplyDelete