ArchLinuxARM Image Generator

Extensible shell script to generate disk image files from the archlinuxarm.org tarball files.

Introduction

The script generates images with a predefined set of configurations and software packages. It works by reading separate shell scripts that provide the neccesary commands to generate the image. These scripts are divided in the following two components.

• platform - Instructions for a specific SOC (system on a chip), eg: odroid n2, odroid c2, etc... On these scripts you can specify commands to install specific kernels, u-boot files, config files...

• env - Instructions to install a Desktop Environment like: xfce, gnome, etc... On this scripts you can specify which software to install for a specific Desktop Environment, generate configuration files or anything else.

Also these components may depend on resources inside the 'mods' directory which contains pre-defined configuration files that are copied to the target generated image.

Requirements

The main build.sh should detect if you have a missing dependency and let you know, but besides this you will need the following:

• ArchLinux installation running same architecture of target image.
• User account with sudo priviliges.

Usage

For now only images for the Odroid N2 are generated with plans to add support for the Odroid C4. But it should be easy to add support for many other platforms. Pull requests with improvements and platforms/ environments additions are welcome. The command line options need some refining and improvements, but for now the option that generates the images is working properly.

To generate a Odroid N2 image you would do:

./build.sh build n2

This will set the environment by default to xfce (you can specify a different environment by using the -e flag). Then the instructions on platform/n2.sh and env/xfce.sh are executed. By default the script will install some packages, you can take a look on env/base.sh for the defaults.

Extending

Adding additional platforms and environments should be pretty simple. The script uses a hook system to call into other scripts depending on the desired platform and environment that was specified on the command line options.

Platforms

In case of adding a platform you would need to edit build.sh, add the file to download, desired image name and platform code name to the following code section:

for arg in "$@"; do
    case "$arg" in
      "n2")
          NAME="ArchLinuxARM-odroid-n2-latest"
          IMAGE="ArchLinuxARM-odroid-n2"
          PLATFORM="n2"
          ;;
      "c4")
          echo "Still working on this..." 1>&2
          exit 1
          ;;
    esac
done

For example:

for arg in "$@"; do
    case "$arg" in
      "n2")
          NAME="ArchLinuxARM-odroid-n2-latest"
          IMAGE="ArchLinuxARM-odroid-n2"
          PLATFORM="n2"
          ;;
      "c2")
          NAME="ArchLinuxARM-odroid-c2-latest"
          IMAGE="ArchLinuxARM-odroid-c2"
          PLATFORM="c2"
          ;;
      "c4")
          echo "Still working on this..." 1>&2
          exit 1
          ;;
    esac
done

Then you should add the installation instructions of this new platform into platform/c2.sh. On this file you have to specify 3 hook functions that get called by main build script:

• platform_pre_chroot
• platform_chroot_setup
• platform_post_chroot

You can take a look in platform/n2.sh to get an idea.

Environments

Finally, adding environments should be the same process as adding a new platform. Lets say you want to add sway. You would create a new file as env/sway.sh, and add to it the following hook functions:

• env_pre_chroot
• env_chroot_setup
• env_post_chroot

You can see the env/xfce.sh file for ideas. In order to use the new platform and environment to generate a new image you would call the script as follows:

./build.sh build -e sway c2

Pull requests with improvements, new platforms or environments are welcome!

Inspiration for this script was taken from: https://github.com/EasyPi/alarmpi-image