Note: Almost all content here will eventually be revised and merged into the live-manual. Please do not add new content to the wiki, but contribute to the manual directly.

This page explains how to make a small live image. The resulting image won't be a general purpose Debian, but it's useful if you want to quickly boot and use one single tool.

Contents

  1. Forewords
  2. Main hints
    1. --bootstrap-flavour minimal
    2. --linux-flavours
    3. --hooks minimal / stripped
    4. --binary-indices disabled
    5. --debootstrap cdebootstrap
    6. --memtest disabled
    7. --apt-recommends
    8. Exclude packages
  3. Extra hints
    1. No locales
    2. Remove kernel from within squashfs file
    3. Delete arbitrary files
    4. remove networking tools
    5. Beyond
  4. All in one script

Forewords

Through out this page, we use the arbitrary-named environment variable $LOCALOPTS, which can contain your local options, expecially the proxy settings, like :

Main hints

The hints listed here are officially included in live-helper.

--bootstrap-flavour minimal

A typical minimal flavour of DebianLive is 93MiB (on i386 ; Debian/etch 2008-05 ; ISO ;binary_etch,minimal-flavour--93MB.packages.txt).

You need to pass the option --apt apt, otherwise lh_build will fail with :

--linux-flavours

If you don't specify --linux-flavours, you may end-up with multiple kernel flavours on the image (486, 686 ...)

This can save up to 30MiB.

--hooks minimal / stripped

The option --hooks minimal or stripped can be used in conjunction with --bootstrap-flavour to remove further stuffs :

(--packages-lists "minimal" is synonym to --hooks minimal see mail).

--binary-indices disabled

Removing binary-indices (i.e. /var/lib/apt/lists/*) saves 6MiB on Etch @i386 (with just main and security enabled).

Purging /var/lib/apt/lists implies that anybody willing to install a package within DebianLive will have to run apt-get update first. (which one should, anyway! ).

--debootstrap cdebootstrap

The option --debootstrap cdebootstrap will instruct lh_build to use cdebootstrap instead of debootstrap. which used to be much more aggressive on package selection. We need to explicit list some package that wouldn't be installed otherwise. (Note : It's difficult to switching to cdebootstrap without removing aptitude).

Note to non US-keyboard users : you probably want to add the package console-common to the list (which will pull console-tools or kbd ).

--memtest disabled

You can save hundreds of KiB by removing memtest :

--apt-recommends

You can fine-tune installed packages by preventing apt-get(8) from installing recommended dependencies.

Exclude packages

You can also explicitly ask not to include some packages :

This is mainly useful if you use a list (like minimal) with debootstrap, but you want to prune some of the software listed in those lists.(/usr/share/live-helper/lists/)

Extra hints

The hints listed here are not officially included/supported by live-helper.

No locales

If you don't need locales and UTF-8, you can save a lot of space. (actually the "stripped" hook deletes the files in /usr/share/locales/ anyway).

1. Tell lh_config that you want to install the package debconf-english 2. Use the variable LH_BOOTSTRAP_EXCLUDE to prevent the installation of locales and debconf-english-i18n 3. Create a script (01-removelocales.sh) to remove locales in case it's got installed :

then

Squeeze

Recent versions of live-helper/live-config do not support 'nolocales' any more. The locale will default to 'en_US.UTF-8'.

Remove kernel from within squashfs file

The kernel is shipped twice on the final CD :

The easiest way is to tell squashfs not to include the /boot folder : 

lh_config [YOUR_OTHER_OPTIONS_HERE]
export MKSQUASHFS_OPTIONS="-e boot"
lh_build

Delete arbitrary files

Some files are often "less" needed, let's delete some of them (YMMV).

remove networking tools

You can add/remove the networking tools (YMMV). List or don't list the following packages  --packages="netbase iputils-ping sysklogd  update-inetd tcpd dhcp3-client"

Beyond

some ideas to save more space

Bad ideas :

All in one script

The following scripts builds a 36Mib (on i386 ; Debian/Etch ; ISO ; etch-live-stripped-packages.txt) 

# Copyright 2007 Franklin Piat ; License GPL + LGPL
#Some local options
[ ! -d /srv/mini-live-helper ] && mkdir -p /srv/mini-live-helper
cd /srv/mini-live-helper || exit 1
LOCALOPTS="  --mirror-binary http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ --mirror-bootstrap http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/"
LOCALOPTS=" --mirror-bootstrap http://192.168.0.10:9999/debian/ --mirror-chroot http://192.168.0.10:9999/debian/ --mirror-binary http://192.168.0.10:9999/debian/ --mirror-chroot-security http://security.eu.debian.org/ --mirror-binary-security http://security.eu.debian.org"


#Let's configure live-helper
lh_config --bootstrap-flavour minimal --packages-lists "stripped" --apt apt --apt-recommends disabled --tasksel none --binary-indices disabled --distribution etch --linux-flavours 686 --union-filesystem unionfs --packages "console-common console-tools  klogd netbase iputils-ping sysklogd update-inetd tcpd dhcp3-client debconf-english" --memtest disabled --bootappend-live "nolocales" $LOCALOPTS


#let's create some scripts

cat <<CHROOTLOCALHOOKS01 > config/chroot_local-hooks/01-removelocales.sh
#!/bin/sh
# Remove locales
# (this could remove other applications. add "-y" if your are confident)
apt-get remove locales  --purge
apt-get remove dselect -y --purge
echo "don t fail on abort (set ERRORLEVEL to zero)" > /dev/null
CHROOTLOCALHOOKS01
chmod +x "config/chroot_local-hooks/01-removelocales.sh"

cat <<CHROOTLOCALHOOKS02 > config/chroot_local-hooks/02-purge-some-modules.sh
#!/bin/sh
# delete the modules we won't need (YMMMV)
rm -Rf /lib/modules/*/kernel/drivers/isdn
rm -Rf /lib/modules/*/kernel/drivers/media
rm -Rf /lib/modules/*/kernel/drivers/net/wireless
CHROOTLOCALHOOKS02
chmod +x "config/chroot_local-hooks/02-purge-some-modules.sh"


# We could exclude some unused  stuffs.
#export LH_BOOTSTRAP_EXCLUDE="vim-tiny,nano,ed"

# exclude some stuffs from the squashfs root
export MKSQUASHFS_OPTIONS="-e boot"
nice ionice -c2 lh_build --debug