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NAME

       live-initramfs - Debian Live initramfs hook

SYNOPSIS

       BOOT=live

       as kernel parameter at boot prompt.

DESCRIPTION

       live-initramfs is a hook for the initramfs-tools, used to generate a
       initramfs capable to boot live systems, such as those created by
       live-helper(7). This includes the Debian Live isos, netboot tarballs,
       and usb stick images.

       At boot time it will look for a (read-only) media containing a "/live"
       directory where a root filesystems (often a compressed filesystem image
       like squashfs) is stored. If found, it will create a writable
       environment, using aufs, for Debian like systems to boot from.

       You probably do not want to install this package onto a non-live
       system, although it will do no harm.

       live-initramfs is a fork of casper[1]. casper was originally written by
       Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@canonical.com[2]> and Matt Zimmerman
       <mdz@canonical.com[3]>.

BOOT OPTIONS

       Here is the complete list of recognized boot parameters by
       live-initramfs.

       access=ACCESS
           Set the accessibility level for physically or visually impared
           users. ACCESS must be one of v1, v2, v3, m1, or m2. v1=lesser
           visual impairment, v2=moderate visual impairment, v3=blindness,
           m1=minor motor difficulties, m2=moderate motor difficulties.

       console=TTY,SPEED
           Set the default console to be used with the "live-getty" option.
           Example: "console=ttyS0,115200"

       debug
           Makes initramfs boot process more verbose.

       fetch=URL
           Another form of netboot by downloading a squashfs image from a
           given url, copying to ram and booting it. Due to current
           limitations in busyboxs wget and DNS resolution, an URL can not
           contain a hostname but an IP only.

       Not working: http://example.com/path/to/your_filesystem.squashfs
       Working: http://1.2.3.4/path/to/your_filesystem.squashfs

       Also note that therefore it’s currently not possible to fetch an image
       from a namebased virtualhost of an httpd if it is sharing the ip with
       the main httpd instance.

       hostname=HOSTNAME, username=USER, userfullname=USERFULLNAME
           Those parameters lets you override values read from the config
           file.

               ignore_uuid

       Do not check that any UUID embedded in the initramfs matches the
       discovered medium. live-initramfs may be told to generate a UUID by
       setting LIVE_GENERATE_UUID=1 when building the initramfs.

       integrity-check
           If specified, an MD5 sum is calculated on the live media during
           boot and compared to the value found in md5sum.txt found in the
           root directory of the live media.

       ip=[CLIENT_IP]:[SERVER_IP]:[GATEWAY_IP]:[NETMASK]:[HOSTNAME]:[DEVICE]:[AUTOCONF]
       [,[CLIENT_IP]:[SERVER_IP]:[GATEWAY_IP]:[NETMASK]:[HOSTNAME]:[DEVICE]:[AUTOCONF]]*
           Let you specify the name(s) and the options of the interface(s)
           that should be configured at boot time. Do not specify this if you
           want to use dhcp (default). It will be changed in a future release
           to mimick official kernel boot param specification (e.g.
           ip=10.0.0.1::10.0.0.254:255.255.255.0::eth0,:::::eth1:dhcp).

       ip=[frommedia]
           If this variable is set, dhcp and static configuration are just
           skipped and the system will use the (must be) media-preconfigured
           /etc/network/interfaces instead.

       {keyb|kbd-chooser/method}=KEYBOARD,
       {klayout|console-setup/layoutcode}=LAYOUT,
       {kvariant|console-setup/variantcode}=VARIANT,
       {kmodel|console-setup/modelcode}=CODE, koptions=OPTIONS
           Configure the running keyboard as specified, if this one misses
           live-initramfs behaves as if "keyb=us" was specified. It will be
           interfered from "locale=" if locale is only 2 lowecase letters as a
           special case. You could also specify console layout, variant, code,
           and options (no defaults).

       live-getty
           This changes the auto-login on virtual terminals to use the
           (experimental) live-getty code. With this option set the standard
           kernel argument "console=" is parsed and if a serial console is
           specified then live-getty is used to autologin on the serial
           console.

       {live-media|bootfrom}=DEVICE
           If you specify one of this two equivalent forms, live-initramfs
           will first try to find this device for the "/live" directory where
           the read-only root filesystem should reside. If it did not find
           something usable, the normal scan for block devices is performed.

       Instead of specifing an actual device name, the keyword removable can
       be used to limit the search of acceptable live media to removable type
       only. Note that if you want to further restrict the media to usb mass
       storage only, you can use the removable-usb keyword.

       {live-media-encryption|encryption}=TYPE
           live-initramfs will mount the encrypted rootfs TYPE, asking the
           passphrase, useful to build paranoid live systems :-). TYPE
           supported so far are "aes" for loop-aes encryption type.

       live-media-offset=BYTES
           This way you could tell live-initramfs that your image starts at
           offset BYTES in the above specified or autodiscovered device, this
           could be useful to hide the Debian Live iso or image inside another
           iso or image, to create "clean" images.

       live-media-path=PATH
           Sets the path to the live filesystem on the medium. By default, it
           is set to /live and you should not change that unless you have
           customized your media accordingly.

       live-media-timeout=SECONDS
           Set the timeout in seconds for the device specified by
           "live-media=" to become ready before giving up.

       {locale|debian-installer/locale}=LOCALE
           Configure the running locale as specified, if not present the
           live-media rootfs configured locale will be used and if also this
           one misses live-initramfs behave as "locale=en_US.UTF-8" was
           specified. If only 2 lowercase letter are specified (like "it"),
           the "maybe wanted" locale is generated (like en:EN.UTF-8), in this
           case if also "keyb=" is unspecified is set with those 2 lowercase
           letters (keyb=us). Beside that facility, only UTF8 locales are
           supported by live-initramfs.

       module=NAME
           Instead of using the default optional file "filesystem.module" (see
           below) another file could be specified without the extension
           ".module"; it should be placed on "/live" directory of the live
           medium.

       netboot[=nfs|cifs]
           This tells live-initramfs to perform a network mount. The parameter
           "nfsroot=" (with optional "nfsopts="), should specify where is the
           location of the root filesystem. With no args, will try cifs first,
           and if it fails nfs.

       nfsopts=
           This lets you specify custom nfs options.

       noautologin
           This parameter disables the automatic terminal login only, not
           touching gdk/kdm.

       noxautologin
           This parameter disables the automatic login of gdm/kdm only, not
           touching terminals.

       nofastboot
           This parameter disables the default disabling of filesystem checks
           in /etc/fstab. If you have static filesystems on your harddisk and
           you want them to be checked at boot time, use this parameter,
           otherwise they are skipped.

       nopersistent
           disables the "persistent" feature, useful if the bootloader (like
           syslinux) has been installed with persistent enabled.

               noprompt

       Do not prompt to eject the CD or remove the USB flash drive on reboot.

       nosudo
           This parameter disables the automatic configuration of sudo.

       swapon
           This parameter enables usage of local swap partitions.

       nouser
           This parameter disables the creation of the default user
           completely.

       noxautoconfig
           This parameter disables Xorg auto-reconfiguration at boot time.
           This is valuable if you either do the detection on your own, or, if
           you want to ship a custom, premade xorg.conf in your live system.

       persistent[=nofiles]
           live-initramfs will look for persistent and snapshot partitions or
           files labeled "live-rw", "home-rw", and files called "live-sn*",
           "home-sn*" and will try to, in order: mount as /cow the first,
           mount the second in /home, and just copy the contents of the latter
           in appropriate locations (snapshots). Snapshots will be tried to be
           updated on reboot/shutdown. Look at live-snapshot(1) for more
           informations. If "nofiles" is specified, only filesystems with
           matching labels will be searched; no filesystems will be traversed
           looking for archives or image files. This results in shorter boot
           times.

               persistent-path=PATH

       live-initramfs will look for persistency files in the root directory of
       a partition, with this parameter, the path can be configured so that
       you can have multiple directories on the same partition to store
       persistency files.

       {preseed/file|file}=FILE
           A path to a file present on the rootfs could be used to preseed
           debconf database.

       package/question=VALUE
           All debian installed packages could be preseeded from command-line
           that way, beware of blanks spaces, they will interfere with
           parsing, use a preseed file in this case.

       quickreboot
           This option causes live-initramfs to reboot without attempting to
           eject the media and without asking the user to remove the boot
           media.

       showmounts
           This parameter will make live-initramfs to show on "/" the ro
           filesystems (mostly compressed) on "/live". This is not enabled by
           default because could lead to problems by applications like "mono"
           which store binary paths on installation.

               silent

       If you boot with the normal quiet parameter, live-initramfs hides most
       messages of its own. When adding silent, it hides all.

           textonly

       Start up to text-mode shell prompts, disabling the graphical user
       interface.

       timezone=TIMEZONE
           By default, timezone is set to UTC. Using the timezone parameter,
           you can set it to your local zone, e.g. Europe/Zurich.

       todisk=DEVICE
           Adding this parameter, live-initramfs will try to copy the entire
           read-only media to the specified device before mounting the root
           filesystem. It probably needs a lot of free space. Subsequent boots
           should then skip this step and just specify the "live-media=DEVICE"
           boot parameter with the same DEVICE used this time.

       toram
           Adding this parameter, live-initramfs will try to copy the whole
           read-only media to the computer’s RAM before mounting the root
           filesystem. This could need a lot of ram, according to the space
           used by the read-only media.

       union=aufs|unionfs
           By default, live-initramfs uses aufs. With this parameter, you can
           switch to unionfs.

       utc=yes|no
           By default, Debian systems do assume that the hardware clock is set
           to UTC. You can change or explicitly set it with this parameter.

       xdebconf
           Uses xdebconfigurator, if present on the rootfs, to configure X
           instead of the standard procedure (experimental).

       xvideomode=RESOLUTION
           Doesn’t do xorg autodetection, but enforces a given resolution.

FILES

           /etc/live.conf

       Some variables can be configured via this config file (inside the live
       system).

           /live/filesystem.module

       This optional file (inside the live media) contains a list of
       white-space or carriage-return-separated file names corresponding to
       disk images in the "/live" directory. If this file exists, only images
       listed here will be merged into the root aufs, and they will be loaded
       in the order listed here. The first entry in this file will be the
       "lowest" point in the aufs, and the last file in this list will be on
       the "top" of the aufs, directly below /cow. Without this file, any
       images in the "/live" directory are loaded in alphanumeric order.

           /etc/live-persistence.binds

       This optional file (which resides in the rootfs system, not in the live
       media) is used as a list of directories which not need be persistent:
       ie. their content does not need to survive reboots when using the
       persistence features.

       This saves expensive writes and speeds up operations on volatile data
       such as web caches and temporary files (like e.g. /tmp and .mozilla)
       which are regenerated each time. This is achieved by bind mounting each
       listed directory with a tmpfs on the original path.

SEE ALSO

       live-snapshot(1), initramfs-tools(8), live-helper(7),
       live-initscripts(7), live-webhelper(7)

BUGS

       Report bugs against live-initramfs
       http://packages.qa.debian.org/live-initramfs.

HOMEPAGE

       More information about the Debian Live project can be found at
       http://debian-live.alioth.debian.org/ and
       http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/.

AUTHORS

       live-initramfs is maintained by Daniel Baumann <daniel@debian.org[4]>
       for the Debian project.

       live-initramfs is a fork of casper[1]. casper was originally written by
       Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@canonical.com[2]> and Matt Zimmerman
       <mdz@canonical.com[3]>.

NOTES

        1. casper
           http://packages.ubuntu.com/casper/

        2. tfheen@canonical.com
           mailto:tfheen@canonical.com

        3. mdz@canonical.com
           mailto:mdz@canonical.com

        4. daniel@debian.org
           mailto:daniel@debian.org