Preparing the larch live medium

The building blocks for the preparation of a live medium are produced by the 'larchification' process: the two squashfs archives, 'system.sqf' and 'mods.sqf', and the 'boot' directory, containing the kernel and initramfs.

This stage adds the bootloader files and user-defined customizations which are directly copied to the medium rather than being included in the squashed archives. The result is written to an iso file (for writing to CD/DVD) or directly to a partition on a disk(-like) device, such as a USB stick. See the cd-root section in the profiles documentation for details on how to customize this data.

It is also possible to use an existing larch medium as input in order to copy the system to a different medium, potentially also changing the bootloader (only possible if the live system was built with support for the new bootloader).

The command line script for building an iso is larch-live_iso. Run 'larch-live_iso -h' to get a usage message.

The command line script for installing to a partition is larch-live_part. Run 'larch-live_part -h' to get a usage message. When the live system is installed to a partition (e.g. USB-stick) it is possible to choose how the boot partition will be recognized. The options available are via UUID, partition label, partition path (e.g. '/dev/sdb1'), or by searching for a partition containing the file 'larch/larchboot'. See also 'Boot parameters'.

The 'bootlines' file allows the boot options to be specified in a manner independent of which bootloader is used. The default version is supplied in the 'larch' package (in the 'data' directory), but this will be overridden by a version supplied in the profile. The unprocessed version is also saved in the 'boot' directory of the created medium, to allow later copying of the medium with a different bootloader.

It is possible to repeat the installation onto various media, changing the configuration, without needing to rerun the 'larchification' stage. The constituent larch files remain unchanged.

Building a boot CD for a USB-stick

Older computers may not be able to boot from USB devices, so the possibility of generating a small boot iso is provided. This can be burned to CD and can be used to boot your larch system on a USB-stick. On the command line this is managed by the larch-boot_iso script. As this function uses the system on the USB-stick, this needs to be plugged in (not mounted!) and selected in the 'Partition' entry.

As the kernel and initramfs are now taken from the CD rather than from the USB device, an update of the kernel using the session saving feature will not work in this case (the boot directory of the USB device would be updated, not that of the CD).

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