Debian Live Manual

The Debian Live Project

Unreleased Snapshot

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.

A copy of the GNU General Public License is available as /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL in the Debian GNU/Linux distribution or on the World Wide Web at the GNU web site. You can also obtain it by writing to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

If you want to print this reference, this document is also available in Portable Document Format (PDF).

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:00:01 +0000


Table of Contents

1. About
1.1. About this manual
1.1.1. Terms
1.1.2. Authors
1.1.3. Contributing to this document
1.2. About the Debian Live Project
1.2.1. Motivation
1.2.2. Philosophy
1.2.3. Contact
2. The basics
2.1. What is a live system?
2.2. First steps: building an ISO image
2.2.1. Testing an ISO image with Qemu
2.2.2. Burning an ISO image to a physical medium
2.3. Building an USB/HDD image
2.3.1. Copying USB/HDD image to a USB stick
2.3.2. Testing a USB/HDD image with Qemu
2.3.3. Using the space left on a USB stick
2.4. Building a netboot image
2.5. Netboot testing HowTo
3. Overview of tools
3.1. live-helper
3.1.1. The lh_config helper
3.1.2. The lh_build helper
3.1.3. The lh_clean helper
3.2. The live-initramfs package
4. Customization
4.1. Customising package installation
4.1.1. Package sources
4.1.2. Package installation
4.1.3. Installing additional packages
4.1.4. Installing modified or third-party packages
4.2. Customising contents
4.2.1. Includes
4.2.2. Hooks
4.2.3. Preseeding Debconf questions
4.2.4. Symlink conversion
4.3. Customising the bootup process
4.3.1. Kernel
4.3.2. Bootloaders
4.3.3. Splash screens
4.3.4. Memtest
4.3.5. Startup scripts
4.3.6. Cheat codes
4.4. Customising the binary image
4.4.1. ISO metadata
4.5. Using a newer kernel with Lenny
5. Common tasks
5.1. The Debian Installer
5.2. WiFi Connection
6. The Live environment
6.1. Swap space
6.2. Hostname
6.3. The Live user
6.4. Language
6.5. Persistence
6.5.1. Full persistence
6.5.2. Home automounting
6.5.3. Snapshots
6.5.4. Persistent SubText
6.5.5. Partial remastering
7. Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
8. Reporting bugs
8.1. Known issues
8.2. Rebuild from scratch
8.3. Use up-to-date packages
8.4. Collect information
8.5. Use the correct package to report the bug against
8.6. Do the research
8.7. Where to report bugs
9. Coding Style
9.1. Compatibility
9.2. Indenting
9.3. Wrapping
9.4. Variables
9.5. Miscellaneous
10. Procedures
10.1. Udeb Uploads
10.2. Major Releases
10.3. Point Releases
10.3.1. Point release announcement template
11. Resources and links
11.1. Links
11.2. Who is using Debian Live?
11.3. English sources related to debian live
11.4. German sources related to debian live
11.5. Spanish sources related to debian live
A. Configuration layout
B. Configuration files
B.1. The config/binary file
B.2. The config/bootstrap file
B.3. The config/chroot file
B.4. The config/common file
B.5. The config/source file
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