How to make a custom ISO image: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 04:29, 12 January 2024

ISO remastering

There are third party scripts to re-build completely custom images, like

alpine-make-vm-image

(works to only make a disk based VM image)

and there is Alpine's original

mkimg.

(creates a diskless ISO file - usually what you want for QEMU and Proxmox)

An alternative

It's also possible to commit and load ISO image customizations to and from a writable partition when booting in Diskless Mode.

Booting an ISO image with local customizations

Directly booting an ISO file

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-One way to completely re-build images is to use a script like [https://github.com/alpinelinux/alpine-make-vm-image alpine-make-vm-image].
+== ISO remastering ==
-But there is also an alternative:
+There are third party scripts to re-build completely custom images, like
+* [https://github.com/alpinelinux/alpine-make-vm-image alpine-make-vm-image]
+(works to only make a disk based VM image)
-== Live Disk customizations with APKOVL configurations ==
+and there is Alpine's original
+* [[How_to_make_a_custom_ISO_image_with_mkimage|mkimg]].
+(creates a diskless ISO file - usually what you want for QEMU and Proxmox)
-The "diskless" Alpine ISO images seem to look for an .apkovl volume in system partitions, and offer to save local backups and package cache to mountpoints below /media/. (Besides supporting a boot parameter that points to a web server.)
-* Boot the diskless system from ISO, and if necessary create and format a partition.
-* Edit /etc/fstab and mount the partition below /media/.
-* Run alpine-setup and choose to save the state to the mounted partition.
-* Customize the system.
-* Generate an APKOVL file with [[Alpine_local_backup|lbu]] by executing <code>lbu commit</code>
-* If instead you put the APKOVL file on a webserver, you need to supply a customized url with the <code>APKOVL</code> boot parameter.
-Notes:
+== An alternative ==
+It's also possible to commit and load ISO image customizations to and from a writable partition when booting in [[Installation#Diskless_Mode|Diskless Mode]].
-* Any packages you add to /etc/apk/world of your lbu will automatically be installed in the live system.
-* See [[Alpine_Linux_package_management#Local_Cache]] about managing included packages.
-* If you don't have a web server you can run busybox's httpd temporarily - <code>busybox httpd -p 127.0.0.1:80</code>
-* See [[Alpine_local_backup|lbu]] about how to customize it to cover files outside of <code>/etc</code>.
-* If you want to make a customized installer, you need to create <code>.default_boot_services</code> which will cause <code>mkinitfs</code> to create the defaults for the live image.
 == Booting an ISO image with local customizations ==
-Booting an ISO image with an .apkovl in a [[Qemu#Live_mode| Qemu]] virtual machine.
+* [[Directly booting an ISO file]]
-Debian's grub-imageboot package is a way to boot .iso files directly.
 [[Category:Package Manager]]
 [[Category:ISO]]