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Making a Debian liveboot iso with Raptor

In this walkthrough, we will take a look at all the steps needed to make a customized Debian liveboot .iso image.

By putting the image on a USB stick or external hard drive, any computer can be booted from this external device, without affecting existing data on the computer.

Using this technique, you will be able to create custom images, containing the tools, programs and settings that you like, and build them consistently and easily with raptor.

This guide is presented as a three-step process:

  • Build: Build raptor layers suitable for live booting.

  • Generate: Generate a live boot iso from the layers

  • Make: Use raptor-make to simplify the build process [optional]

TL;DR

Below is an absolutely minimal example of generating a liveboot iso, for the impatient.

Create a raptor file:

base.rapt

# Start from a docker iso
FROM docker://debian:trixie

# Set root password to "raptor"
RUN usermod -p "$1$GQf2tS9s$vu72NbrDtUcvvqnyAogrH0" root

# Update package sources, and install packages
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -qy systemd-sysv live-boot linux-image-amd64

Git clone (or otherwise download) the necessary build container recipes:

git clone https://github.com/chrivers/raptor-builders.git

Then use these to build liveboot.iso:

sudo raptor run -L rbuild raptor-builders '$rbuild.deblive' -I base -O liveboot.iso

After this command has run, you should have the file liveboot.iso available. Enjoy!

To learn how (and why) this works, read the next chapters of this guide.