+.TH CASPER 7 "Mon, 26 Sep 2006" "1.68" "Initramfs-tools hook"
+
+.SH NAME
+casper \- an hook for initramfs-tools to boot live systems.
+
+.SH SYNOPSIS
+.B BOOT=casper
+As kernel parameter boot prompt.
+
+.SH DESCRIPTION
+Casper is an hook for initramfs-tools used to boot live systems like those created by make-live, this includes the Debian-Live isos, netboot tarballs, and usb stick image and Ubuntu live cds. At boot time it will look for a (often read only) media containing a "/casper" directory where root filesystems (often squashfs compressed) lies and create, using unionfs, a writable environment for debian like systems to boot from.
+
+.SH RECOGNIZED BOOT OPTIONS
+.TP
+.BI "host=" HOSTNAME " , userfullname=" USERFULLNAME " , username=" USERNAME
+Those parameters lets you override values read from the config file.
+.TP
+.B casper-getty
+This enable a special serial login shell (experimental).
+.TP
+.BI ip= IFACE,ADDRESS,NETMASK,GATEWAY [ :IFACE,ADDRESS,NETMASK,GATEWAY "]*"
+Let you specify the name(s) and the options of the interface(s) that should be configured at boot time. Do not specify it if you want to use dhcp (default).
+.TP
+.BR ip[= frommedia ]
+This way dhcp and static configuration is just skipped and the system will use the (must be) media-preconfigured /etc/network/interfaces instead.
+
+.TP
+.BR "netboot[=" nfs "|" cifs ]
+This tells casper to look for a network mount, to be specified by parameter "nfsroot=" (with optional "nfsopts="), for the "/casper" dirs where root filesystem lies. With no args, will try cifs first, and if it fails nfs.
+.TP
+.B persistent
+Casper will look for persistent and snapshot partitions or files labeled "casper-rw", "home-rw", "casper-snap*", "home-snap*" and will try to, in order: mount as /cow the first, mount the second in /home, and just copy the contents of the latters in appropriate locations.
+.TP
+.B toram
+Adding this parameter, casper will try to copy to ram the whole read-only media before mounting the root filesystem(s), it could need a lot of ram, according to the space used by the read only media.
+
+.SH FILES
+.B /etc/casper.conf
+some variables could be configured via this config file.
+
+.SH BUGS
+.B casper
+works fully on amd64, i386 and ppc, it should too on other archs.
+
+.SH HOMEPAGE
+Debian Live project <http://live.debian.net/>
+
+.SH SEE ALSO
+.BR initramfs-tools(8), make-live(8), make-live.conf(8)
+
+.SH AUTHOR
+casper was written by Tollen Fog Heen <tfheen@canonical.com>, Matt Zimmerman <mdz@canonical.com>, and Marco Amadori <marco.amadori@gmail.com>,
+.TP
+This manual was written by Marco Amadori <marco.amadori@gmail.com>,
+for the Debian project (but may be used by others).