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93 lines
8.2 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 39
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Title: HPR0039: Debian Live CD
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0039/hpr0039.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:39:01
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---
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music
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music
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Hey, this is Oct 3 with another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
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Today I'm going to talk about Debian Life and the Debian Life Project.
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Debian Life is a framework that is used to build life systems for the Debian distribution.
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It can include the classic installer.
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It can build CD-ROM, USB, and at boot images, all life systems.
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It's a live project, but it's also used for making pre-built images.
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And it also includes desktop environments such as GNOME, KDE, XFICE.
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And you can also install pretty much anything in the Debian repositories, including source code and drivers and kernels.
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The features that I liked about this project was that you can include the Debian installer from the official release onto your live system.
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And you can create a live CD with the installer for your specific setup.
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Let's say you have a computer laptop that has bad Wi-Fi cards for Linux.
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You can install that onto your live system.
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You have the installer copied over when it creates your hard drive.
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You can also include raid drivers.
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Anything that you'd like and anything you can compile and run in Linux, you can put on your live system.
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Also, the other thing you can include are encrypted hard drives disks into your live system installer.
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Or you can encrypt the live system itself when it boots.
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Whereas a password, and you can keep private files on it.
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It supports DM-CRIPT, loop AES, and encrypted volumes.
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And the encrypted volumes are for hard drive installation, obviously.
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And the next thing that I liked about this project was that it boots by Net Boot or Web Boot.
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Net Boot is booting your system from a remote location, whereas Web Boot is grabbing your boot system from a remote location and booting it locally.
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The advantage of Net Boot is you don't have to have hard drive Web Boot is.
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You don't need an internet connection after the initial boot.
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The next thing that I liked was you can create a Zen system using Zen kernels from the Debian repositories.
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Basically, anything that you would need supported by Debian that you can get to copy over to the disk and that will obviously be able to run from a live CD will work.
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Now that I've described basically the advantage of every live CD project out there, I'm going to explain the advantage of using the Debian live project.
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Dev is built around a framework for a standard set of options to build a default live system.
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You can also use various customizations for your live system with an automated tool that hooks into the Debian live framework.
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This tool is called Live Helper, and it comes with a GUI.
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It doesn't come with a GUI, but you can get the GUI quite easily. It's called Live Magic.
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The advantage of using this tool is that you can run through a set of options that you can find in the Man page.
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Basically, what you would do is you would run the config script and the build command.
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The config script basically sets a bunch of options in various config files and standardizes the build and then you run the build command.
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If you wanted to get into really customizing your build process, what you would do is you would run the configuration script.
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After that, you would bootstrap Che root through the accompanying Che root scripts and then Che root you were directory.
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After that, you can do pretty much anything you would if you were building manually.
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I think you would run your remove on all your Che root scripts and run your LH underscore binary script.
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If you have a good CD, change the name, move it to another directory, and then clean it with the clean command and your set.
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The thing about Debian Live is that it is highly configurable. You can specify as much as what mirrors you use during the bootstrap as well as the binary process.
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You can specify the security mirrors or bootstrap and binary, meaning bootstrap as when it builds the system and binary as when it is using packages.
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For the actual system, you are going to be booting up for the ISO is generated.
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You can specify your own repository in this manner. You can also specify your own packages and packages list.
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You can include any piece of software that you have been able to create into a binary or RPM if you have RPM installed onto your Debian system.
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I just entirely suggested that you use all Debian packages as this is a Debian system.
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The advantage is easy and you can also specify different build options as in the USB.
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I have used it many times, the USB stick. You do it in the same way as building a live CD, except for you just have to specify the dash B, USB dash HDD command.
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It is a little confusing, but once you see the help on the main page, it is very simple to specify.
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It is a little bit harder to build a live USB stick because the process is complicated because of the fact that it is on a USB stick.
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Aside from building with the live helper utility, you can include the GUI, which is very similar to what the Debian installer looks like.
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It does all the same options. It is just a little bit buggy because it is behind the development process of live helper for reasons unknown to me.
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It still works and you just have to make sure that you get the latest version from their Git Repositories and it works just fine.
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What I have used the live helper utility for and the Debian has been very supportive is for building live rescue disk for work.
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It works quite well to be able to rebuild a disk with a new tool on the fly or update the system and you can also build live USB sticks.
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As I mentioned, you can put it from DVD CD so if you are using a rescue disk, you can bring it with you, your live USB, your CD ROM, your DVD ROM.
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You can install to an SD card if you have to. It is a little bit more complicated but you can.
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I had created a SD card installation for my ASUS triple EPC of a live CD that I had generated with all they create.
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The necessary drivers and such patch kernel for the ASUS that comes with these Android OS.
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At this point I am going to talk about what I have been doing with the Debian live utilities.
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I am going to be trying to build a Debian from scratch live CD and so far I have a base system that boots from an ASUS on a CD ROM.
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I am trying to add in a way to the system from scratch out of the live helper utility.
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Simply add in another module of some sort that will hook into live helper and be able to be called from an option at command line.
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Right now I have created a development environment that I can use to create same builds, destroy back up.
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I have done this using the OpenVZ virtual private server software.
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Also known as a VirtualOzo.
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What I ended up doing was I created a VPS for a Debian mirror to download the official repositories.
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Then I created a second one where I could pull the sources of certain packages that I would be bootstrapping my system with.
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I compiled them all, destroyed my year from the official packages, pulled up a smear and created one out of the packages I had compiled.
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After that I started building my live systems with Debian packages that I had compiled with all the items I needed.
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Now I am in the process of putting a GUI with XORG and I am deciding on what window manager to use.
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At that point I have a working system with a GUI and a few tools.
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Then I will probably start working on the automated tool of helper and throw in my ID code and quite possibly submit it to their project.
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If they don't like it either way I have pretty much done what I wanted to do.
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The plan is to include the Enlightenment 17 window manager.
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The problem is that it is the best way to build it as I was told by the e-developers was that I need to get the Nightly CVS build and compile it and then keep those packages that I create from that source.
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Keep it handy for a month as I was told the CVS builds can be very unstable for e-17.
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So I might in the meantime probably keep something like fluxbox or window manager 2 or something of that sort that is very lightweight window manager that I can repetitively recompile very simply.
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And that is pretty much it for my podcast.
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I am probably going to go to sleep now. I hope you enjoyed my recording and have a great day.
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Thanks.
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Thank you for listening to Half Republic Radio.
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HPR is sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to C-A-R-O.N-E-T for all of us in need.
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Thank you.
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