How to build the official style iso image?

mek · January 24, 2023, 9:26am

What is the process used to build the official iso images?

I found live-server.yaml, but the official
images seem to have some additional boot loader (which also allows to edit the kernel boot options on boot time.

sbharveyCL · January 25, 2023, 5:28pm

You might be able to use the link shown:
url:Index of /releases/ (clearlinux.org)
to see how previous and current releases are put together.

btwarden · January 27, 2023, 12:28am

You mean the boot timeout?
Follow the rabbit trail: live-server.yaml → live-server-post-install.sh → wait-to-boot-post.sh

mek · January 29, 2023, 1:38am

@btwarden hi, thx for picking it up. Trust me, I am chasing rabbits for some time now

when you boot up the iso image there is a short boot selector dialog, there you can select an image test or also use e to actually edit the kernel parameters.

one source to chaise was: clr-installer/ISO_README.md at ac2cbde712a0c77d65a8e902503290afb24f431f · clearlinux/clr-installer · GitHub

I think it might have been a too full image file, it seem to have behaved different when I changed that in /usr/share/clr-installer/iso_template/initrd_init_template

and there I also actually found the isolinux.cfg.template which is controlling the
boot. It lacks some more chaising, like how the bios boot vs. efi works and where the boot.txt is coming from.

Anyhow, my menu I get is a ncurses style text selection dialog, where the official iso image looks to be some graphic mode.

This is why I say, it would be good to understand how the official image is actually build, with all of its needed parts, so one could reproduce the exact image with the same behaviour.

btwarden · January 30, 2023, 5:29pm

The official build is really just doing clr-installer -c live-server.yaml.

mek · January 30, 2023, 10:39pm

@btwarden as said above, its less about the yaml and more about the rest, like, how does the content of /usr/share/clr-installer look like when building.

A comment regards the yaml, where to find that one, the clr-installer github repo clr-installer/scripts at master · clearlinux/clr-installer · GitHub only has a:

developer-live-server.yaml

Thats why I say, it would be handy to know the exact way.

btwarden · January 31, 2023, 1:06am

/usr/share/clr-installer is created and populated by the build process for clr-installer itself. For the ISO templates, for example, see:

github.com

clearlinux/clr-installer/blob/ac2cbde712a0c77d65a8e902503290afb24f431f/Makefile#L96


      
          endif
          
          
# Install
          install: install-tui install-gui
          
          
install-common:
          	@install -D -m 644 $(top_srcdir)/themes/clr-installer.theme $(THEME_DIR)/clr-installer.theme
          	@install -D -m 644 $(top_srcdir)/themes/high-contrast.theme $(THEME_DIR)/high-contrast.theme
          	@mkdir -p -m 755 $(LOCALE_DIR)/
          	@cp -rp --no-preserve=ownership $(top_srcdir)/locale/* $(LOCALE_DIR)/
          	@install -D -m 644 $(top_srcdir)/iso_templates/initrd_init_template $(ISO_TEMPLATE_DIR)/initrd_init_template
          	@install -D -m 644 $(top_srcdir)/iso_templates/isolinux.cfg.template $(ISO_TEMPLATE_DIR)/isolinux.cfg.template
          	@install -D -m 644 $(top_srcdir)/etc/clr-installer.yaml $(CONFIG_DIR)/clr-installer.yaml
          	@install -D -m 644 $(top_srcdir)/etc/bundles.json $(CONFIG_DIR)/bundles.json
          	@install -D -m 644 $(top_srcdir)/etc/kernels.json $(CONFIG_DIR)/kernels.json
          	@install -D -m 644 $(top_srcdir)/etc/chpasswd $(CONFIG_DIR)/chpasswd
          	@install -D -m 644 $(top_srcdir)/etc/systemd/clr-installer-provision.service $(SYSTEMD_DIR)/clr-installer-provision.service
          	@install -D -m 644 $(top_srcdir)/completions/bash/clr-installer $(BASH_COMP_DIR)/clr-installer
          	@install -D -m 644 $(top_srcdir)/completions/zsh/_clr-installer $(ZSH_COMP_DIR)/_clr-installer
          
          
install-tui: build-tui install-common

You can see the files populated during packaging here:

github.com

clearlinux-pkgs/clr-installer/blob/c8671d8c29b72cc62b0dd2acfb84d6115da14160/clr-installer.spec#L127


      
          cp %{_builddir}/clr-installer-%{version}/vendor/gopkg.in/yaml.v2/NOTICE %{buildroot}/usr/share/package-licenses/clr-installer/9522d95b2b9b284285cc3fb6ecc445aa3ee5e785
          %make_install
          
          
%files
          %defattr(-,root,root,-)
          
          
%files bin
          %defattr(-,root,root,-)
          /usr/bin/clr-installer
          
          
%files data
          %defattr(-,root,root,-)
          /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/clr-installer
          /usr/share/clr-installer/iso_templates/initrd_init_template
          /usr/share/clr-installer/iso_templates/isolinux.cfg.template
          /usr/share/clr-installer/themes/clr-installer.theme
          /usr/share/clr-installer/themes/high-contrast.theme
          /usr/share/clr-installer/themes/style.css
          /usr/share/defaults/clr-installer/bundles.json
          /usr/share/defaults/clr-installer/chpasswd
          /usr/share/defaults/clr-installer/clr-installer.yaml

The installer configs and scripts for the current release are always published here:
https://download.clearlinux.org/current/config/image/

So, in summary:

Download and build clr-installer from source (or add the clr-installer bundle if you’re already running Clear Linux).
Download the contents of /current/config/image.
Run clr-installer -c live-server.yaml

That’s all you need to replicate our official builds.

Indy · March 4, 2023, 10:31am

I managed to build a live-desktop.img with text installer as I have a RTX4090 but failed to build the iso. Just followed the instructions at the clear linux github repo. I put the live-desktop.yaml in the /clr-installer/scripts folder before running ```
sudo .gopath/bin/clr-installer --config scripts/developer-image.yaml

Aqua1ung · March 23, 2023, 8:26pm

Wouldn’t it be simpler to just download the clear-xxxxx-live-desktop.img (or, as the case may be, clear-xxxxx-live-server.img), and make it bootable?

BTW, how does one go about making that .img file bootable?

marioroy · March 23, 2023, 8:58pm

There are steps in the following issue request for taking the live-desktop.img and making it work. You will still need to boot into text mode for systems using NVIDIA graphics and run the text-based installer.

Be sure to run (sudo swupd clean) after booting into newly installed CL to free up space. There may be a regression in swupd or the CL installer not cleaning up after installation.

Edit: This is a backup plan when the live desktop ISO is missing.

Aqua1ung · March 27, 2023, 7:01pm

I downloaded yesterday the latest bootable ISO for live desktop CL, and it works just fine, and made me happy. As such, all is well in Clear Linux land from this point of view.

pixelgeek · March 30, 2023, 9:14pm

Ditto this. I just downloaded, used Balena Etcher to write to USB stick, and booted 37980 from the Clear Linux Download page. It’s now installied to disk.

Aqua1ung · March 30, 2023, 10:50pm

I usually get the latest from here.