.\" Copyright 2011 Lars Wirzenius .\" .\" This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify .\" it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by .\" the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or .\" (at your option) any later version. .\" .\" This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, .\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of .\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the .\" GNU General Public License for more details. .\" .\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License .\" along with this program. If not, see . .\" .TH VMDEBOOTSTRAP 8 .SH NAME vmdebootstrap \- install basic Debian system into virtual disk image .SH SYNOPSIS .B vmdebootstrap \-\-image=FILE \-\-size=SIZE [\-\-mirror=URL] [\-\-distribution=NAME] .PP .B vmdebootstrap [\-\-output=FILE] [\-\-verbose |\-\-no-verbose] \-\-image=FILE \-\-size=SIZE [\-\-tarball=FILE] [\-\-mirror=URL] [\-\-arch=ARCH] [\-\-distribution=NAME] [\-\-package=PACKAGE] [\-\-custom-package=DEB] [\-\-no-kernel] [\-\-kernel-package] [\-\-enable-dhcp | \-\-no-enable-dhcp] [\-\-root-password=PASSWORD] [\-\-customize=SCRIPT] [\-\-hostname=HOSTNAME] [\-\-user=USER/PASSWORD] [\-\-serial-console | \-\-no-serial-console] [\-\-sudo |\-\-no-sudo] [\-\-owner=OWNER] [\-\-bootsize=BOOTSIZE] [\-\-boottype=FSTYPE] [\-\-roottype=FSTYPE] [\-\-foreign=PATH] [\-\-variant=VARIANT] [\-\-no-extlinux] [\-\-squash] [\-\-configure-apt] [\-\-grub] [\-\-apt-mirror] [\-\-pkglist] [\-\-use\-efi] [\-\-efi\-size] [\-\-debootstrapopts] .SH DESCRIPTION .B vmdebootstrap installs a basic Debian system into a virtual disk image, for use with virtual machines, such as KVM, Qemu, or VirtualBox. It is like .BR debootstrap (8), which does the same thing, but puts the system into a directory, for use with .BR chroot (8). (In fact, .B vmdebootstrap is a wrapper around .BR debootstrap ). .PP You need to run .B vmdebootstrap as root. If the \-\-verbose option is not used, no output will be sent to the command line. If the \-\-log option is not used, no output will be sent to any log files either. .PP To use the image, you probably want to create a virtual machine using your preferred virtualization technology, such as .BR kvm (1), or .BR qemu (1). Configure the virtual machine to use the image you've created. Then start the virtual machine, (see .B EXAMPLES ) and log into it via its console to configure it. The image has an empty root password and will not have networking configured by default. Set the root password before you configure networking. .SH NETWORKING The \-\-enable\-networking option uses the /etc/network/interfaces.d/ source directory, with the default settings for .B lo and .B eth0 being added to /etc/network/interfaces.d/setup. Other networking configuration can be specified using a customisation script. Localhost settings would be: auto lo iface lo inet loopback If \-\-enable\-dhcp is specified, these settings are also included into /etc/network/interfaces.d/setup: auto eth0 iface eth0 inet dhcp For systems running newer versions of systemd, the interface name needs to be set in advance of the first boot instead of being dependent on the boot itself. See the http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/PredictableNetworkInterfaceNames/ .B vmdebootstrap disables this behaviour by symlinking /dev/null to /etc/udev/rules.d/80-net-setup-link.rules .SH BOOTLOADERS Unless the \-\-no\-extlinux or \-\-grub options are specified, the image will use .BR extlinux (1) as a boot loader. .B bootsize is not recommended when using .B extlinux \- use grub instead. Versions of grub2 in wheezy can fail to install in the VM, at which point vmdebootstrap will fall back to extlinux. It may still be possible to complete the installation of grub2 after booting the VM as the problem may be related to the need to use loopback devices during the grub-install operation. Details of the error will appear in the vmdebootstrap log file, if enabled with the \-\-log option. Note that .B grub-legacy is not supported. .B vmdebootstrap also supports .B EFI. Use \-\-use\-uefi to use grub\-efi instead of grub\-pc. If the default 5Mb is not enough space, use the \-\-esp\-size option to specify a different size for the EFI partition. Registered firmware is not supported as it would need to be done after boot. If the system you are creating is for more than just a VM or live image, you will likely need a larger ESP, up to 500Mb. .B UBoot needs manual configuration via the customisation hook scripts, typically support requires adding u\-boot using \-\-package and then copying or manipulating the relevant u\-boot files in the customisation script. Examples are included for beaglebone-black. .SH INSTALLATION IMAGES AND VIRTUAL MACHINES .B vmdebootstrap is aimed principally at creating virtual machines, not installers or prebuilt installation images. It is possible to create prebuilt installation images for some devices but this depends on the specific device. (A 'prebuilt installation image' is a single image file which can be written to physical media in a single operation and which allows the device to boot directly into a fully installed system \- in a similar way to how a virtual machine would behave.) .PP .B vmdebootstrap assumes that all operations take place on a local image file, not a physical block device / removable media. .PP .B vmdebootstrap is intended to be used with tools like qemu on the command line to launch a new virtual machine. Not all devices have virtualisation support in hardware. .PP This has implications for .B u-boot support in some cases. If the device can support reading the bootloader from a known partition, like the beaglebone-black, then .B vmdebootstrap can provide space for the bootloader and the image will work as a prebuilt installation image. If the device expects that the bootloader exists at a specific offset and therefore requires that the bootloader is written as an image not as a binary which can be copied into an existing partition, .B vmdebootstrap is unable to include that bootloader image into the virtual machine image. .PP The beagleboneblack.sh script in the examples/ directory provides a worked example to create a prebuilt installation image. However, the beagleboneblack itself does not support virtualisation in hardware, so is unable to launch a virtual machine. Other devices, like the Cubietruck or Wandboard need .B u-boot at a predefined offset but can launch a virtual machine using qemu, so the cubietruck and wandboard6q scripts in the examples/ directory relate to building images for virtual machines once the device is already installed and booted into a suitable kernel. .PP It is possible to wrap .B vmdebootstrap in such a way as to prepare a .B physical block device with a bootloader image and then deploy the bootstrap on top. However, this does require physical media to be inserted and removed each time the wrapper is executed. To do this, use the \-\-tarball option instead of the \-\-image option. Then setup the physical media and bootloader image manually, as required for the device, redefine the partitions to make space for the rootfs, create a filesystem on the physical media and unpack the .B vmdebootstrap tarball onto that filesystem. Once you have working media, an image can be created using dd to read back from the media to an image file, allowing other media to be written with a single image file. .SH OPTIONS .IP \-\-output=FILE write output to FILE, instead of standard output .IP \-\-verbose report what is going on .IP \-\-image=FILE put created disk image in FILE .IP \-\-size=SIZE create a disk image of size SIZE (1000000000) .IP \-\-tarball=FILE tar up the disk's contents in FILE .IP \-\-mirror=URL use MIRROR as package source (http://http.debian.net/debian/) .IP \-\-arch=ARCH architecture to use (amd64) - if using an architecture which the host system cannot execute, ensure the \-\-foreign option is also used. .IP \-\-distribution=NAME release to use (defaults to stable). The release needs to be a valid Debian or Ubuntu release name or codename. .IP \-\-package=PACKAGE install PACKAGE onto system .IP \-\-custom-package=DEB install package in DEB file onto system (not from mirror) .IP \-\-no-kernel do not install a linux package .IP \-\-kernel-package If \-\-no-kernel is not used and the auto-selection of the .B linux-image-586 or .B linux-image-armmp or .B linux-image-$ARCH package is not suitable, the kernel package can be specified explicitly. .IP \-\-enable-dhcp enable DHCP on eth0 .IP \-\-root-password=PASSWORD set root password .IP \-\-customize=SCRIPT run SCRIPT after setting up system. If the script does not exist in the current working directory, /usr/share/vmdebootstrap/examples/ will be checked as a fallback. The script needs to be executable and is passed the root directory of the debootstrap as the only argument. Use chroot if you need to execute binaries within the debootstrap. .IP \-\-hostname=HOSTNAME set name to HOSTNAME (debian) .IP \-\-user=USER/PASSWORD create USER with PASSWORD .IP \-\-owner=OWNER change the owner of the final image from root to the specified user. .IP \-\-serial\-console configure image to use a serial console .IP \-\-serial-console-command set the command to manage the serial console which will be appended to /etc/inittab. Default is "/sbin/getty \-L ttyS0 115200 vt100", resulting in a line .BR "S0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty \-L ttyS0 115200 vt100" .IP \-\-sudo install sudo, and if user is created, add them to sudo group .IP \-\-bootsize=BOOTSIZE If specified, create a /boot partition of the given size within the image. Debootstrapping will fail if this is too small for the selected kernel package. .IP \-\-boottype=FSTYPE Filesystem to use for the /boot partition. (default ext2) .IP \-\-roottype=FSTYPE Filesystem to use for the / (root) partition. (default ext4) .IP \-\-swap=SWAPSIZE If specified, create a swap partition of the given size within the image. Debootstrapping will fail if this results in a root partition which is too small for the selected packages. The minimum swap space is 256Mb as the default memory allocation of QEMU is 128Mb. A default 1Gb image is not likely to have enough space for a swap partition as well. .IP \-\-foreign=PATH Path to the binfmt_handler to enable foreign support in debootstrap. e.g. /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \- note foreign debootstraps may take a signficant amount of time to complete and that debootstrap will retry five times if packages fail to install by default. .IP \-\-no\-extlinux Skip installation of extlinux. needs a customize script to make the image bootable. Useful for architectures where extlinux is not supportable. Depending on how the image is to be booted, the \-\-mbr option may also be necessary with extlinux. .IP \-\-squash Run mksquashfs against the final image using xz compression \- requires squashfs-tools to be installed. The final file will have the .squashfs suffix. By default, mksquashfs is allowed to use all processors which may result in high load. Run mksquashfs separately if you need to control the number of processors used per run. squashfs can also have issues with large image files (where large is a factor of the amount of data inside the image rather than the size of the image itself). These errors can result in invalid images (e.g. image does not boot) or corrupted images (truncated file). This is a known bug in squashfs. Avoid using the \-\-squash option and consider squashing the loopback mounted directory tree of the image. .B vmdebootstrap will check if the squashed filesystem is less than 1MB and leave the unsquashed image in place with a warning about a possible squashfs failure. .IP \-\-configure\-apt Use the specified mirror and distribution to create a suitable apt source inside the VM. Can be useful if debootstrap fails to create it automatically. .IP \-\-apt\-mirror Use the specified mirror inside the image instead of the mirror used to build the image. This is useful if you have a local mirror to make building the image quicker but the image needs to run even if that mirror is not available. .IP \-\-grub Disable extlinux installation and configure grub2 instead. grub2 will be added to the list of packages to install. update-grub will be called once the debootstrap is complete and grub-install will be called in the image. .IP \-\-debootstrapopts Pass additional options to debootstrap as a quoted list of options and values, separated by spaces. e.g. --debootstrapopts="variant=buildd no-check-gpg components=main,contrib". See debootstrap \-\-help and debootstrap (1) for valid options. .IP \-\-no\-acpid Disable installation of acpid if not required, otherwise acpid will be installed if \-\-foreign is not used. .IP \-\-pkglist Output a list of package names installed inside the image. Useful if you need to track the relevant source packages used inside the image for licence compliance. .SH Configuration files and settings: .IP \-\-dump-config write out the entire current configuration .IP \-\-no-default-configs clear list of configuration files to read .IP \-\-config=FILE add FILE to config files .SH Logging: .IP \-\-log=FILE write log entries to FILE (default is to not write log files at all); use "syslog" to log to system log, or "none" to disable logging .IP \-\-log-level=LEVEL log at LEVEL, one of debug, info, warning, error, critical, fatal (default: debug) .IP \-\-log-max=SIZE rotate logs larger than SIZE, zero for never (default: 0) .IP \-\-log-keep=N keep last N logs (10) .IP \-\-log-mode=MODE set permissions of new log files to MODE (octal; default 0600) .SH Peformance: .IP \-\-dump-memory-profile=METHOD make memory profiling dumps using METHOD, which is one of: none, simple, meliae, or heapy (default: simple) .IP \-\-memory-dump-interval=SECONDS make memory profiling dumps at least SECONDS apart .SH EXAMPLE To create an image for the stable release of Debian: .IP sudo vmdebootstrap \-\-image test.img \-\-size 1g \\ \-\-log test.log \-\-log-level debug \-\-verbose \\ \-\-mirror http://mirror.lan/debian/ .PP To run the test image, make sure it is writeable. Use the \-\-owner option to set mode 0644 for the specified user or use chmod manually: .IP sudo chmod a+w ./test.img .PP Execute using qemu, e.g. on amd64 using qemu-system-x86_64: .IP qemu-system-x86_64 -drive format=raw,file=./test.img .PP (This loads the image in a new window.) Note the use of -drive file=,format=raw which is needed for newer versions of QEMU. .PP There is EFI firmware available to use with QEMU when testing images built using the UEFI support, but this software is in Debian non-free due to patent concerns. If you choose to install .B ovmf to test UEFI builds, a secondary change is also needed to symlink the provided OVMF.fd to the file required by QEMU: bios-256k.bin and then tell QEMU about the location of this file with the -L option: .IP $ qemu-system-x86_64 \-L /usr/share/ovmf/ -machine accel=kvm \\ \-m 4096 \-smp 2 \-drive format=raw,file=test.img .PP For further examples, including u-boot support for beaglebone-black, see /usr/share/vmdebootstrap/examples .SH NOTES If you get problems with the bootstrap process, run a similar bootstrap call directly and chroot into the directory to investigate the failure. The actual debootstrap call is part of the vmdebootstrap logfile. The debootstrap logfile, if any, will be copied into your current working directory on error. .PP .B debootstrap will download all the apt archive files into the apt cache and does not remove them before starting the configuration of the packages. This can mean that debootstrap can fail due to a lack of space on the device if the VM size is small. vmdebootstrap cleans up the apt cache once debootstrap has finished but this doesn't help if the package unpack or configuration steps use up all of the space in the meantime. Avoid this problem by specifying a larger size for the image. .PP Note that if you are also using a separate /boot partition in your options to .B vmdebootstrap it may well be the boot partition which needs to be enlarged rather than the entire image. .PP It is advisable to change the mirror in the example scripts to a mirror closer to your location, particularly if you need to do repeated builds. Use the \-\-apt\-mirror option to specify the apt mirror to be used inside the image, after boot. .PP There are two types of examples for ARM devices available with .B vmdebootstrap: prebuilt installation images (like the beaglebone-black) and virtual machine images (cubietruck and wandboard). ARM devices which do not support hypervisor mode and which also rely on the bootloader being at a specific offset instead of using a normal partition will .B not be supportable by vmdebootstrap. Similarly, devices which support hypervisor will only be supported using virtual machine images, unless the bootloader can be executed from a normal partition. .PP .SH "SEE ALSO" .BR debootstrap (8) , .BR qemu-system-x86_64 (1) , .BR grub-install (8) . .SH BUGS Please provide the config section of the logfile when reporting bugs, as well as the complete command line.