[SOLVED] How much of /home does larchify include in larch live?

handy · 2008-12-24 10:35:59

I'm interested in using larch, as it looks to be a very useful tool.

I have a question, (though I'm sure I will get more):

If I use the larchify command to make a live medium from my currently installed Arch system, is the entire contents of /home included in the new live Arch?

If so I wouldn't be able to fit it on a DVD.

Last edited by handy (2009-07-03 07:43:44)

handy · 2008-12-26 04:40:06

So nobody knows?

Or is the answer so obvious that no one will help me with a link?

vogt · 2008-12-26 22:43:39

All of it. You should have tried it; it doesn't take that long. Or none of it (if the mksquashfs had -e /home). If you don't want everything then you could temporarily have a directory containing a minimal home bind mounted to /home (with the original partition mounted on /mnt, which is not included)

Otherwise it would be nearly impossible to make the right choice for you: you have to do it.

The best documentation for stuff like that is the actual code that pieces together the stuff that builds the livecd. You could also check out the documentation on the larch website too.

handy · 2008-12-26 22:49:58

Thanks vogt for your reply.

I have read much of the doc's on the larch site, though none of the scripts.
I expected that all was copied, but I have often found that there are tricks to doing things that aren't in the documentation, therefore this thread.

I guess the safest way for me to shrink the size of /home is to copy out all of the data & other known non-system files to another partition, I should be able to get my system onto a 4.3Gb DVD then.

Thanks again for clearing this up for me.

MoonSwan · 2008-12-26 23:43:12

If you do find a nice & clean way to do this so that you make a dvd iso with a minimal /home, please document if it when you have time here or on a wiki. I am sure there are others who would love to know how to do this but aren't quite as able to read scripts & what ever else (read: we're not all coders ).

Thanks.

handy · 2008-12-27 00:13:22

If I have success I will document it.

I can't call myself a coder these days either.

I stopped scripting in AmigaDOS & coding in CanDo, when I left the Amiga's in 1995 (I was probably depressed). Apart from the config.sys, autoexec.bat & a few other pidly little scripts in the evil MS world the only scripting I've done is in the installation & maintenance of Arch, which is as you know, is bugger all.

vogt · 2008-12-29 02:36:59

MoonSwan wrote:

If you do find a nice & clean way to do this so that you make a dvd iso with a minimal /home, please document if it when you have time here or on a wiki. I am sure there are others who would love to know how to do this but aren't quite as able to read scripts & what ever else (read: we're not all coders ).
Thanks.

Just add the huge directories you want ignored to the ignoredirs list in /opt/larch/buildlive. If you want to spend more time getting rid of stuff in you home, then I'd suggest making another one (lvm or regular partition), then mount it over your /home/username: the original stuff will be hidden until you unmount that other partition.

I have this in a shell script to make updating a compressed root that can be copied to ram on boot (some larch initcpio hook does that when you give the kernel a c2r parameter on boot)

#You probably have enough space to build the iso and squashfs
#root without this, but I did not; it goes on my home partition
mount LABEL=home /mnt
mount --bind /mnt/lar /.larch

# this makes the cd
larchify -fg /

# The following copy the squashfs to my boot partition, where
# it can be found
mount /dev/sda2 /boot
mkdir -p /boot/live/boot

# copy the squashfs and overlays and kernel...
cp /.larch/cd/* /boot
cp /.larch/cd/boot/* /boot/live/boot

# make sure larch finds /boot as a root
# I have not tested these
mkdir /boot/larch
touch /boot/larch/larchboot
touch /boot/larch/save

# I forget where the squashfs root and overlays belong; so now
# they are in both places
ln /boot/live/* /boot

# unnecessary cleanup
umount /boot
umount /.larch
umount /mnt

title c2r Arch (64)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /live/boot/vmlinuz c2r silent quiet
initrd /live/boot/larch.img

Lastly, to get it to boot, I had to add:

BINARIES="/usr/bin/lzop /bin/tar"

to /lib/initcpio/mkinitcpio.conf; I don't think they should have to be manually included, but that's what I had to do.

To put this on the wiki probably demands merging it with the very similar http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Diskless_System

MoonSwan · 2008-12-29 08:16:36

Ah yay thanks Vogt! I really need to sit down & read the Larch docs in their entirety. I keep procrastinating on this yet want to get going on making a little specialist distro with Larch. Much thanks for your script, if it doesn't help me I'm sure it will aid someone else.

handy · 2008-12-29 12:26:05

Yes, let me add my thanks too, vogt.

Being unfamiliar with bash scripting I will have to focus & think hard in an effort to understand the larch process in as much detail as I'm capable, in a supreme effort to avoid my trashing my Arch install due to ignorance of what I am actually doing.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-12-24 10:35:59

[SOLVED] How much of /home does larchify include in larch live?

#2 2008-12-26 04:40:06

Re: [SOLVED] How much of /home does larchify include in larch live?

#3 2008-12-26 22:43:39

Re: [SOLVED] How much of /home does larchify include in larch live?

#4 2008-12-26 22:49:58

Re: [SOLVED] How much of /home does larchify include in larch live?

#5 2008-12-26 23:43:12

Re: [SOLVED] How much of /home does larchify include in larch live?

#6 2008-12-27 00:13:22

Re: [SOLVED] How much of /home does larchify include in larch live?

#7 2008-12-29 02:36:59

Re: [SOLVED] How much of /home does larchify include in larch live?

#8 2008-12-29 08:16:36

Re: [SOLVED] How much of /home does larchify include in larch live?

#9 2008-12-29 12:26:05

Re: [SOLVED] How much of /home does larchify include in larch live?

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