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<br />
<h1><big>larch</big>
–
a do-it-yourself live <em>Arch Linux</em> CD</h1>
<img style="border: 0px solid ; width: 320px; height: 320px;" alt="" src="larch1.jpg"
name="graphics1" align="right" hspace="10" vspace="10" />
<br /><br />
<h2>Quick Start</h2>
<br /><br />
<p>A quick run through of the steps necessary to build your own <em>larch</em> CD.
This should provide you with a working live CD, but to take full advantage of
the flexibility offered by the <em>larch</em> build system you will probably need
to consult the rest of the documentation.</p>
<ul>
<li>At present there is only a repository for 'i686',
as I don't have a 64-bit machine (but testers are welcome to build their own
repository from svn - a simple script is provided).
</li>
<li>Download <a href="ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/larch/larch5.3/i686/larch-setup"><strong>larch-setup</strong></a>
to an empty working directory and run it (it is a shell script). This will in
turn download and unpack the current larch package, setting up symlinks so that
the build scripts can be run from this working directory.</li>
<li>Run './mklarch -h' to get a usage description.
</li>
<li>From now on you must be running as root, i.e. it's potentially dangerous stuff!
</li>
<li>You can then try building one of the example profiles, for example:
<pre>./mklarch -p larch/profiles/xmini</pre>
You can also adapt one of the example profiles to your own needs.
</li>
<li> If you chose a delivered profile, the build should just run, apart from
asking for confirmation a few times.
</li>
<li> For a custom build:
<ul>
<li> Copy an example profile (from larch/profiles) to your working directory, giving it
an appropriate name.
</li>
<li> Edit 'locale.gen' for your glibc locale needs.
</li>
<li> Edit 'rcconfx', which contains just the changes to the default
/etc/rc.conf. Especially the locale and console
keyboard setting may be interesting.</li>
<li> Editing the overlay (the set of files which are changed from the default
installation) might be a bit trickier, as permissions and ownerships must be
correct. Please read the relevant
<a href="larch_profiles.html">documentation</a>
before attempting this.</li>
<li> OPTIONAL: If you want ssh access to your live system,
see <a href="larch_ssh.html">'ssh access'</a></li>
</ul>
before running <em>mklarch</em>.
<li> Another possibility is to use <strong>larchify</strong> (run './larchify -h'
for a usage description) to 'livify' an existing <em>Arch Linux</em> installation, even
the currently running one. Certain packages must be installed, but then running
'./larchify path/to/installation' should be
enough for a simple build. See <a href="larch_overview.html#existingSystem">
'Making a live CD from an existing <em>Arch</em> installation'</a> for more details.</li>
<li> After a while, the iso for the CD should be ready for burning.</li>
<li> Alternatively, you can put it on a USB-stick, by passing the '-u' option
to 'mklarch'.</li>
<li> Share and Enjoy!</li>
</ul>
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