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