Arch Linux

c0rax

Member

Registered: 2018-11-17

Posts: 9

Building custom ISO with Archiso - need good wireless driver coverage

I'm building a custom general purpose ISO for pentesting and forensics/RE, which I'll be running live on arbitrary (but hopefully modern) hardware, and potentially installing it when I need some persistence.

I don't need a lot out of the box, but one of the critical things is to have all the tools I need to get wireless communication running from the get go, since I won't always have the chance to connect via ethernet. It looks like the linux-firmware package (rightly) doesn't include proprietary images, so I won't be able to get, for example, some broadcom cards working directly.

I want to remedy this by adding proprietary drivers to my packages.x86_64 archiso file to have, if possible, total coverage of common netword cards, but I'm unsure which ones I have to get, and I would like to avoid bloating my image with unneeded drivers. The relevant wiki section doesn't really tell me which of the proprietary drivers are redundant with open source variants.

Is there a list somewhere that I can use? How do the "easy install" distros do it? (Since in practice they tend to work out of the box).

Thanks!

tonnz

Member

Registered: 2015-08-02

Posts: 38

Re: Building custom ISO with Archiso - need good wireless driver coverage

It looks like the linux-firmware package (rightly) doesn't include proprietary images

I'm pretty sure it does, looking at the source of the linux-firmware package. And looking at the PKGBUILD, it doesn't look like any nonfree firmware is pruned.

but I'm unsure which ones I have to get, and I would like to avoid bloating my image with unneeded drivers. [...] Is there a list somewhere that I can use?

This Gentoo wiki page (firmware section of the WiFi-article) seems like a good start, though sadly not the complete list you are looking for. It also shows one (two?) example of firmware that isn't available in the linux-firmware package, but can be obtained elsewhere. The Gentoo wiki is always a good place to find examples and references about anything regarding kernel compilation.

Generally speaking, the (arch) linux-kernel + linux-firmware should cover the vast majority of wifi devices. As a sidenote, i recently bought a 1€ noname USB wifi adapter on the flea market and it just worked.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,465

Website

Re: Building custom ISO with Archiso - need good wireless driver coverage

Generally speaking, the (arch) linux-kernel + linux-firmware should cover the vast majority of wifi devices.

I'd definitely disagree with the use of "vast" there.  It's not immediately obvious if even a majority of wifi devices would be covered, though such a claim doesn't seem entirely unreasonable.  There are, however, ample common wifi devices that are not in that majority.

As much as I loathe broadcom-wl in general, you'd probably want that around.  It often has worse performance than other broadcom drivers and lots of little annoyances, but it is a nice last-resort as it gets a lot of devices working that might not otherwise.  But overall, just check the wiki and install what you think you might need.

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

Torxed

Member

Registered: 2013-01-10

Posts: 203

Re: Building custom ISO with Archiso - need good wireless driver coverage

I might miss some complexity here, but if possible I'd strongly recommend pre-compiling or adding existing binaries to a local repo which you can use/add during the iso-build process.

This way, the package can be added to packages.x86_64 as per usual and get sucked in from your local mirror.

Last edited by Torxed (2018-11-17 17:00:42)

c0rax

Member

Registered: 2018-11-17

Posts: 9

Re: Building custom ISO with Archiso - need good wireless driver coverage

Thanks, these are some great recommendations!

eschwartz

Fellow

Registered: 2014-08-08

Posts: 4,097

Re: Building custom ISO with Archiso - need good wireless driver coverage

Is there a list somewhere that I can use? How do the "easy install" distros do it? (Since in practice they tend to work out of the box).

Thanks!

The "easy install" distros have no more right to distribute illegal-to-distribute things than we do...

The primary example I can think of for this is the b43 firmware, which because $reasons cannot be included in linux-firmware. On Arch, you need to install it from the AUR, and on Ubuntu, this "works out of the box" because after installing Ubuntu via your exclusively wired connection, it autodetects your wifi device, realizes it needs b43-firmware, and runs a post-installation hook that downloads the firmware over your wired connection. Afterwards, you finally have working wifi.

...

More generally, most things should just work. It's only the diehard libre distros that do not distribute the standard linux-firmware package, and that's not because they think it is illegal, but rather because they're morally opposed to shipping firmware that doesn't come with source code.

Last edited by eschwartz (2018-11-18 00:52:28)

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