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