6 live-initramfs - Debian Live initramfs hook
12 as kernel parameter at boot prompt.
17 live-initramfs is a hook for the initramfs-tools, used to generate a initramfs
18 capable to boot live systems, such as those created by *live-helper*(7).
19 This includes the Debian Live isos, netboot tarballs, and usb stick images.
21 At boot time it will look for a (read-only) media containing a "/live"
22 directory where a root filesystems (often a compressed filesystem image like
23 squashfs) is stored. If found, it will create a writable environment, using
24 aufs, for Debian like systems to boot from.
26 You probably do not want to install this package onto a non-live system,
27 although it will do no harm.
29 live-initramfs is a fork of link:http://packages.ubuntu.com/casper/[casper].
30 casper was originally written by Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@canonical.com>
31 and Matt Zimmerman <mdz@canonical.com>.
36 Here is the complete list of recognized boot parameters by live-initramfs.
40 Set the accessibility level for physically or visually impared users. ACCESS
41 must be one of v1, v2, v3, m1, or m2. v1=lesser visual impairment, v2=moderate
42 visual impairment, v3=blindness, m1=minor motor difficulties, m2=moderate motor
47 Set the default console to be used with the "live-getty" option. Example:
48 "console=ttyS0,115200"
52 Makes initramfs boot process more verbose.
56 Another form of netboot by downloading a squashfs image from a given url,
57 copying to ram and booting it. Due to current limitations in busyboxs wget
58 and DNS resolution, an URL can not contain a hostname but an IP only.
60 Not working: http://example.com/path/to/your_filesystem.squashfs
61 Working: http://1.2.3.4/path/to/your_filesystem.squashfs
63 Also note that therefore it's currently not possible to fetch an image from a
64 namebased virtualhost of an httpd if it is sharing the ip with the main httpd
67 hostname=*HOSTNAME*, username=*USER*, userfullname=*USERFULLNAME*::
69 Those parameters lets you override values read from the config file.
73 Do not check that any UUID embedded in the initramfs matches the discovered
74 medium. live-initramfs may be told to generate a UUID by setting
75 LIVE_GENERATE_UUID=1 when building the initramfs.
79 If specified, an MD5 sum is calculated on the live media during boot and
80 compared to the value found in md5sum.txt found in the root directory of the
83 ip=**[CLIENT_IP]:[SERVER_IP]:[GATEWAY_IP]:[NETMASK]:[HOSTNAME]:[DEVICE]:[AUTOCONF] [,[CLIENT_IP]:[SERVER_IP]:[GATEWAY_IP]:[NETMASK]:[HOSTNAME]:[DEVICE]:[AUTOCONF]]***::
85 Let you specify the name(s) and the options of the interface(s) that should be
86 configured at boot time. Do not specify this if you want to use dhcp (default).
87 It will be changed in a future release to mimick official kernel boot param
88 specification (e.g. ip=10.0.0.1::10.0.0.254:255.255.255.0::eth0,:::::eth1:dhcp).
92 If this variable is set, dhcp and static configuration are just skipped and the
93 system will use the (must be) media-preconfigured /etc/network/interfaces
96 {keyb|kbd-chooser/method}=**KEYBOARD**, {klayout|console-setup/layoutcode}=**LAYOUT**, {kvariant|console-setup/variantcode}=**VARIANT**, {kmodel|console-setup/modelcode}=**CODE**, koptions=**OPTIONS**::
98 Configure the running keyboard as specified, if this one misses live-initramfs
99 behaves as if "keyb=us" was specified. It will be interfered from "locale=" if
100 locale is only 2 lowecase letters as a special case. You could also specify
101 console layout, variant, code, and options (no defaults).
105 This changes the auto-login on virtual terminals to use the (experimental)
106 live-getty code. With this option set the standard kernel argument "console=" is
107 parsed and if a serial console is specified then live-getty is used to autologin
108 on the serial console.
110 {live-media|bootfrom}=**DEVICE**::
112 If you specify one of this two equivalent forms, live-initramfs will first try
113 to find this device for the "/live" directory where the read-only root
114 filesystem should reside. If it did not find something usable, the normal scan
115 for block devices is performed.
117 Instead of specifing an actual device name, the keyword 'removable' can be used
118 to limit the search of acceptable live media to removable type only. Note that
119 if you want to further restrict the media to usb mass storage only, you can use
120 the 'removable-usb' keyword.
122 {live-media-encryption|encryption}=**TYPE**::
124 live-initramfs will mount the encrypted rootfs TYPE, asking the passphrase,
125 useful to build paranoid live systems :-). TYPE supported so far are "aes" for
126 loop-aes encryption type.
128 live-media-offset=**BYTES**::
130 This way you could tell live-initramfs that your image starts at offset BYTES in
131 the above specified or autodiscovered device, this could be useful to hide the
132 Debian Live iso or image inside another iso or image, to create "clean" images.
134 live-media-path=**PATH**::
136 Sets the path to the live filesystem on the medium. By default, it is set to
137 '/live' and you should not change that unless you have customized your media
140 live-media-timeout=**SECONDS**::
142 Set the timeout in seconds for the device specified by "live-media=" to become
143 ready before giving up.
145 {locale|debian-installer/locale}=**LOCALE**::
147 Configure the running locale as specified, if not present the live-media rootfs
148 configured locale will be used and if also this one misses live-initramfs behave
149 as "locale=en_US.UTF-8" was specified. If only 2 lowercase letter are specified
150 (like "it"), the "maybe wanted" locale is generated (like en:EN.UTF-8), in this
151 case if also "keyb=" is unspecified is set with those 2 lowercase letters
152 (keyb=us). Beside that facility, only UTF8 locales are supported by
157 Instead of using the default optional file "filesystem.module" (see below)
158 another file could be specified without the extension ".module"; it should be
159 placed on "/live" directory of the live medium.
161 netboot[=**nfs**|**cifs**]::
163 This tells live-initramfs to perform a network mount. The parameter "nfsroot="
164 (with optional "nfsopts="), should specify where is the location of the root
165 filesystem. With no args, will try cifs first, and if it fails nfs.
169 This lets you specify custom nfs options.
173 This parameter disables the automatic terminal login only, not touching gdk/kdm.
177 This parameter disables the automatic login of gdm/kdm only, not touching
182 This parameter disables the default disabling of filesystem checks in
183 /etc/fstab. If you have static filesystems on your harddisk and you want them to
184 be checked at boot time, use this parameter, otherwise they are skipped.
188 disables the "persistent" feature, useful if the bootloader (like syslinux) has
189 been installed with persistent enabled.
193 Do not prompt to eject the CD on reboot.
197 This parameter disables the automatic configuration of sudo.
201 This parameter enables usage of local swap partitions.
205 This parameter disables the creation of the default user completely.
209 This parameter disables Xorg auto-reconfiguration at boot time. This is valuable
210 if you either do the detection on your own, or, if you want to ship a custom,
211 premade xorg.conf in your live system.
213 persistent[=nofiles]::
215 live-initramfs will look for persistent and snapshot partitions or files labeled
216 "live-rw", "home-rw", and files called "live-sn*", "home-sn*" and will try to,
217 in order: mount as /cow the first, mount the second in /home, and just copy the
218 contents of the latter in appropriate locations (snapshots). Snapshots will be
219 tried to be updated on reboot/shutdown. Look at live-snapshot(1) for more
220 informations. If "nofiles" is specified, only filesystems with matching labels
221 will be searched; no filesystems will be traversed looking for archives or image
222 files. This results in shorter boot times.
226 live-initramfs will look for persistency files in the root directory of a partition,
227 with this parameter, the path can be configured so that you can have multiple
228 directories on the same partition to store persistency files.
230 {preseed/file|file}=**FILE**::
232 A path to a file present on the rootfs could be used to preseed debconf
235 package/question=**VALUE**::
237 All debian installed packages could be preseeded from command-line that way,
238 beware of blanks spaces, they will interfere with parsing, use a preseed file in
243 This option causes live-initramfs to reboot without attempting to eject the
244 media and without asking the user to remove the boot media.
248 This parameter will make live-initramfs to show on "/" the ro filesystems
249 (mostly compressed) on "/live". This is not enabled by default because could
250 lead to problems by applications like "mono" which store binary paths on
255 If you boot with the normal quiet parameter, live-initramfs hides most messages
256 of its own. When adding silent, it hides all.
260 Start up to text-mode shell prompts, disabling the graphical user interface.
262 timezone=**TIMEZONE**::
264 By default, timezone is set to UTC. Using the timezone parameter, you can set it
265 to your local zone, e.g. Europe/Zurich.
269 Adding this parameter, live-initramfs will try to copy the entire read-only
270 media to the specified device before mounting the root filesystem. It probably
271 needs a lot of free space. Subsequent boots should then skip this step and just
272 specify the "live-media=DEVICE" boot parameter with the same DEVICE used this
277 Adding this parameter, live-initramfs will try to copy the whole read-only media
278 to the computer's RAM before mounting the root filesystem. This could need a lot
279 of ram, according to the space used by the read-only media.
281 union=**aufs**|**unionfs**::
283 By default, live-initramfs uses aufs. With this parameter, you can switch to
288 By default, Debian systems do assume that the hardware clock is set to UTC. You
289 can change or explicitly set it with this parameter.
293 Uses xdebconfigurator, if present on the rootfs, to configure X instead of the
294 standard procedure (experimental).
296 xvideomode=**RESOLUTION**::
298 Doesn't do xorg autodetection, but enforces a given resolution.
305 Some variables can be configured via this config file (inside the live system).
307 /live/filesystem.module
309 This optional file (inside the live media) contains a list of white-space or
310 carriage-return-separated file names corresponding to disk images in the "/live"
311 directory. If this file exists, only images listed here will be merged into the
312 root aufs, and they will be loaded in the order listed here. The first entry
313 in this file will be the "lowest" point in the aufs, and the last file in
314 this list will be on the "top" of the aufs, directly below /cow. Without
315 this file, any images in the "/live" directory are loaded in alphanumeric order.
317 /etc/live-persistence.binds
319 This optional file (which resides in the rootfs system, not in the live media)
320 is used as a list of directories which not need be persistent: ie. their
321 content does not need to survive reboots when using the persistence features.
323 This saves expensive writes and speeds up operations on volatile data such as
324 web caches and temporary files (like e.g. /tmp and .mozilla) which are
325 regenerated each time. This is achieved by bind mounting each listed directory
326 with a tmpfs on the original path.
332 live-snapshot(1), initramfs-tools(8), live-helper(7), live-initscripts(7),
338 Report bugs against live-initramfs
339 link:http://packages.qa.debian.org/live-initramfs[http://packages.qa.debian.org/live-initramfs].
344 More information about the Debian Live project can be found at
345 link:http://debian-live.alioth.debian.org/[http://debian-live.alioth.debian.org/] and
346 link:http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/[http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/].
351 live-initramfs is maintained by Daniel Baumann <daniel@debian.org>
352 for the Debian project.
354 live-initramfs is a fork of link:http://packages.ubuntu.com/casper/[casper].
355 casper was originally written by Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@canonical.com>
356 and Matt Zimmerman <mdz@canonical.com>.