vmdebootstrap.8.in

   1 .\" Copyright 2011 Lars Wirzenius <liw@liw.fi>
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  16 .TH VMDEBOOTSTRAP 8
  17 .SH NAME
  18 vmdebootstrap \- install basic Debian system into virtual disk image
  19 .SH SYNOPSIS
  20 .B vmdebootstrap
  21 --image=FILE --size=SIZE [--mirror=URL] [--distribution=NAME]
  22 .PP
  23 .B vmdebootstrap
  24 [--output=FILE] [--verbose | --no-verbose] --image=FILE --size=SIZE
  25 [--tarball=FILE] [--mirror=URL] [--arch=ARCH] [--distribution=NAME]
  26 [--package=PACKAGE] [--custom-package=DEB] [--no-kernel]
  27 [--enable-dhcp | --no-enable-dhcp] [--root-password=PASSWORD]
  28 [--customize=SCRIPT] [--hostname=HOSTNAME] [--user=USER/PASSWORD]
  29 [--serial-console | --no-serial-console] [--sudo | --no-sudo] [--owner=OWNER]
  30 [--bootsize=BOOTSIZE] [--boottype=FSTYPE] [--foreign=PATH] [--variant=VARIANT]
  31 [--no-extlinux] [--squash] [--configure-apt] [--grub] [--apt-mirror]
  32 [--pkglist]
  33 .SH DESCRIPTION
  34 .B vmdebootstrap
  35 installs a basic Debian system into a virtual disk image,
  36 for use with virtual machines,
  37 such as KVM, Qemu, or VirtualBox.
  38 It is like
  39 .BR debootstrap (8),
  40 which does the same thing, but puts the system into a directory,
  41 for use with
  42 .BR chroot (8).
  43 (In fact,
  44 .B vmdebootstrap
  45 is a wrapper around
  46 .BR debootstrap ).
  47 .PP
  48 You need to run
  49 .B vmdebootstrap
  50 as root. If the \-\-verbose option is not used, no output will be
  51 sent to the command line. If the \-\-log option is not used, no
  52 output will be sent to any log files either.
  53 .PP
  54 To use the image,
  55 you probably want to create a virtual machine using your preferred
  56 virtualization technology, such as
  57 .BR kvm (1),
  58 or
  59 .BR qemu (1).
  60 Configure the virtual machine to use the image you've created.
  61 Then start the virtual machine, (see
  62 .B EXAMPLES
  63 )
  64 and log into it via its console to configure it.
  65 The image has an empty root password and will not have networking
  66 configured by default. Set the root password before you configure
  67 networking.
  68 .SH BOOTLOADERS
  69 Unless the \-\-no\-extlinux or \-\-grub options are specified, the
  70 image will use
  71 .BR extlinux (1)
  72 as a boot loader.
  73 .B bootsize
  74 is not recommended when using
  75 .B extlinux
  76 - use grub instead.
  77 Versions of grub2 in wheezy
  78 can fail to install in the VM, at which point vmdebootstrap will fall back to
  79 extlinux. It may still be possible to complete the installation of grub2 after
  80 booting the VM as the problem may be related to the need to use loopback
  81 devices during the grub-install operation. Details of the error will appear in the
  82 vmdebootstrap log file, if enabled with the \-\-log option. Note that
  83 .B grub-legacy
  84 is not supported.
  85 .SH INSTALLATION IMAGES AND VIRTUAL MACHINES
  86 .B vmdebootstrap
  87 is aimed principally at creating virtual machines, not installers or prebuilt
  88 installation images. It is possible to create prebuilt installation images
  89 for some devices but this depends on the specific device. (A 'prebuilt
  90 installation image' is a single image file which can be written to physical
  91 media in a single operation and which allows the device to boot directly
  92 into a fully installed system - in a similar way to how a virtual machine
  93 would behave.)
  94 .PP
  95 .B vmdebootstrap
  96 assumes that all operations take place on a local image file, not a
  97 physical block device / removable media.
  98 .PP
  99 .B vmdebootstrap
 100 is intended to be used with tools like qemu on the command line to launch
 101 a new virtual machine. Not all devices have virtualisation support in hardware.
 102 .PP
 103 This has implications for
 104 .B u-boot
 105 support in some cases. If the device can support reading the bootloader
 106 from a known partition, like the beaglebone-black, then
 107 .B vmdebootstrap
 108 can provide space for the bootloader and the image will work as a prebuilt
 109 installation image. If the device expects that the bootloader exists at a
 110 specific offset and therefore requires that the bootloader is written as
 111 an image not as a binary which can be copied into an existing partition,
 112 .B vmdebootstrap
 113 is unable to include that bootloader image into the virtual machine image.
 114 .PP
 115 The beagleboneblack.sh script in the examples/ directory provides a worked
 116 example to create a prebuilt installation image. However, the beagleboneblack
 117 itself does not support virtualisation in hardware, so is unable to launch
 118 a virtual machine. Other devices, like the Cubietruck or Wandboard need
 119 .B u-boot
 120 at a predefined offset but can launch a virtual machine using qemu, so
 121 the cubietruck and wandboard6q scripts in the examples/ directory relate
 122 to building images for virtual machines once the device is already
 123 installed and booted into a suitable kernel.
 124 .PP
 125 It is possible to wrap
 126 .B vmdebootstrap
 127 in such a way as to prepare a
 128 .B physical block device
 129 with a bootloader image and then deploy the bootstrap on top. However,
 130 this does require physical media to be inserted and removed each time
 131 the wrapper is executed. To do this, use the \-\-tarball option instead
 132 of the \-\-image option. Then setup the physical media and bootloader
 133 image manually, as required for the device, redefine the partitions to
 134 make space for the rootfs, create a filesystem on the physical media and
 135 unpack the
 136 .B vmdebootstrap
 137 tarball onto that filesystem. Once you have working media, an image can be
 138 created using dd to read back from the media to an image file, allowing
 139 other media to be written with a single image file.
 140 .SH OPTIONS
 141 .IP \-\-output=FILE
 142 write output to FILE, instead of standard output
 143 .IP \-\-verbose
 144 report what is going on
 145 .IP \-\-image=FILE
 146 put created disk image in FILE
 147 .IP \-\-size=SIZE
 148 create a disk image of size SIZE (1000000000)
 149 .IP \-\-tarball=FILE
 150 tar up the disk's contents in FILE
 151 .IP \-\-mirror=URL
 152 use MIRROR as package source (http://cdn.debian.net/debian/)
 153 .IP \-\-arch=ARCH
 154 architecture to use (amd64)
 155 .IP \-\-distribution=NAME
 156 release to use (stable)
 157 .IP \-\-package=PACKAGE
 158 install PACKAGE onto system
 159 .IP \-\-custom-package=DEB
 160 install package in DEB file onto system (not from mirror)
 161 .IP \-\-no-kernel
 162 do not install a linux package
 163 .IP \-\-enable-dhcp
 164 enable DHCP on eth0
 165 .IP \-\-root-password=PASSWORD
 166 set root password
 167 .IP \-\-customize=SCRIPT
 168 run SCRIPT after setting up system. If the script does not exist in the current
 169 working directory, /usr/share/vmdebootstrap/examples/ will be checked as a
 170 fallback. The script needs to be executable and is passed the root directory of
 171 the debootstrap as the only argument. Use chroot if you need to execute binaries
 172 within the debootstrap.
 173 .IP \-\-hostname=HOSTNAME
 174 set name to HOSTNAME (debian)
 175 .IP \-\-user=USER/PASSWORD
 176 create USER with PASSWORD
 177 .IP \-\-owner=OWNER
 178 change the owner of the final image from root to the specified user.
 179 .IP \-\-serial\-console
 180 configure image to use a serial console
 181 .IP \-\-serial-console-command
 182 set the command to manage the serial console which will be appended to
 183 /etc/inittab. Default is "/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 115200 vt100", resulting in a line
 184 .BR "S0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 115200 vt100"
 185 .IP \-\-sudo
 186 install sudo, and if user is created, add them to sudo group
 187 .IP \-\-bootsize=BOOTSIZE
 188 If specified, create a /boot partition of the given size within the image.
 189 Debootstrapping will fail if this is too small for the selected kernel package.
 190 .IP \-\-boottype=FSTYPE
 191 Filesystem to use for the /boot partition. (default ext2)
 192 .IP \-\-foreign=PATH
 193 Path to the binfmt_handler to enable foreign support in debootstrap.
 194 e.g. /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static - note foreign debootstraps may take a signficant
 195 amount of time to complete and that debootstrap will retry five times if
 196 packages fail to install by default.
 197 .IP \-\-no\-extlinux
 198 Skip installation of extlinux. needs a customize script to make the image
 199 bootable. Useful for architectures where extlinux is not supportable.
 200 Depending on how the image is to be booted, the \-\-mbr option may also be
 201 necessary with extlinux.
 202 .IP \-\-squash
 203 Run mksquashfs against the final image using xz compression - requires
 204 squashfs-tools to be installed. The final file will have the .squashfs suffix.
 205 By default, mksquashfs is allowed to use all processors which may result
 206 in high load. Run mksquashfs separately if you need to control the number
 207 of processors used per run.
 208 .IP \-\-configure\-apt
 209 Use the specified mirror and distribution to create a suitable apt source inside
 210 the VM. Can be useful if debootstrap fails to create it automatically.
 211 .IP \-\-apt\-mirror
 212 Use the specified mirror inside the image instead of the mirror used to
 213 build the image. This is useful if you have a local mirror to make building
 214 the image quicker but the image needs to run even if that mirror is not
 215 available.
 216 .IP \-\-grub
 217 Disable extlinux installation and configure grub2 instead. grub2 will be added to
 218 the list of packages to install. update-grub will be called once the debootstrap is
 219 complete and grub-install will be called in the image.
 220 .IP \-\-pkglist
 221 Output a list of package names installed inside the image. Useful if you
 222 need to track the relevant source packages used inside the image for
 223 licence compliance.
 224 .SH Configuration files and settings:
 225 .IP \-\-dump-config
 226 write out the entire current configuration
 227 .IP \-\-no-default-configs
 228 clear list of configuration files to read
 229 .IP \-\-config=FILE
 230 add FILE to config files
 231 .SH Logging:
 232 .IP \-\-log=FILE
 233 write log entries to FILE (default is to not write log files at all);
 234 use "syslog" to log to system log, or "none" to disable logging
 235 .IP \-\-log-level=LEVEL
 236 log at LEVEL, one of debug, info, warning, error, critical, fatal (default: debug)
 237 .IP \-\-log-max=SIZE
 238 rotate logs larger than SIZE, zero for never (default: 0)
 239 .IP \-\-log-keep=N
 240 keep last N logs (10)
 241 .IP \-\-log-mode=MODE
 242 set permissions of new log files to MODE (octal;  default 0600)
 243 .SH Peformance:
 244 .IP \-\-dump-memory-profile=METHOD
 245 make memory profiling dumps using METHOD, which is one of:
 246 none, simple, meliae, or heapy (default: simple)
 247 .IP \-\-memory-dump-interval=SECONDS
 248 make memory profiling dumps at least SECONDS apart
 249 .SH EXAMPLE
 250 To create an image for the stable release of Debian:
 251 .nf
 252 .IP
 253 sudo vmdebootstrap --image test.img --size 1g \\
 254     --log test.log --log-level debug --verbose \\
 255     --mirror http://mirror.lan/debian/
 256 .PP
 257 To run the test image, make sure it is writeable. Use the \-\-owner
 258 option to set mode 0644 for the specified user or use chmod manually:
 259 .IP
 260 sudo chmod a+w ./test.img
 261 .PP
 262 Execute using qemu, e.g. on amd64 using qemu-system-x86_64:
 263 .IP
 264 qemu-system-x86_64 ./test.img
 265 .PP
 266 (This loads the image in a new window.)
 267 .PP
 268 For further examples, including u-boot support for beaglebone-black,
 269 see /usr/share/vmdebootstrap/examples
 270 .SH NOTES
 271 If you get problems with the bootstrap process, run a similar bootstrap
 272 call directly and chroot into the directory to investigate the failure.
 273 The actual debootstrap call is part of the vmdebootstrap logfile. The
 274 debootstrap logfile, if any, will be copied into your current working
 275 directory on error.
 276 .PP
 277 .B debootstrap
 278 will download all the apt archive files into the apt cache and does not
 279 remove them before starting the configuration of the packages. This can
 280 mean that debootstrap can fail due to a lack of space on the device if
 281 the VM size is small. vmdebootstrap cleans up the apt cache once debootstrap
 282 has finished but this doesn't help if the package unpack or configuration
 283 steps use up all of the space in the meantime. Avoid this problem by
 284 specifying a larger size for the image.
 285 .PP
 286 Note that if you are also using a separate /boot partition in your options to
 287 .B vmdebootstrap
 288 it may well be the boot partition which needs to be enlarged rather than
 289 the entire image.
 290 .PP
 291 It is advisable to change the mirror in the example scripts to a mirror
 292 closer to your location, particularly if you need to do repeated builds.
 293 Use the \-\-apt\-mirror option to specify the apt mirror to be used inside
 294 the image, after boot.
 295 .PP
 296 There are two types of examples for ARM devices available with
 297 .B vmdebootstrap:
 298 prebuilt installation images (like the beaglebone-black) and virtual
 299 machine images (cubietruck and wandboard). ARM devices which do not
 300 support hypervisor mode and which also rely on the bootloader being at
 301 a specific offset instead of using a normal partition will
 302 .B not
 303 be supportable by vmdebootstrap. Similarly, devices which support
 304 hypervisor will only be supported using virtual machine images, unless
 305 the bootloader can be executed from a normal partition.
 306 .PP
 307 .SH "SEE ALSO"
 308 .BR debootstrap (8)
 309 ,
 310 .BR qemu-system-x86_64 (1)
 311 ,
 312 .BR grub-install (8)
 313 .
 314 .SH BUGS
 315 Please provide the config section of the logfile when reporting bugs, as well as the complete command line.