Minimal text-only live build?

[eml-deb]

I'm just about to try a Woof-CE build, but I'd like to make sure that I'm not re-inventing the wheel first.

Is there already a recipe for a text-only live build? All I need is a boot to a shell, with no graphics. I don't care which distro, or whether it's 32- or 64-bit. It needs to have a UEFI boot (I think I'm right in saying that some motherboards no longer support legacy boot). This will be used to install another image from the net, so it basically just needs wget/gunzip/dd, and some disk stuff (fdisk/lsblk/etc). Thanks.

[eml-deb]

And a question: if I'm building locally (I don't want to use github) do I need a real partition to do the build in, or can I just build in a directory?

[rockedge]

And a question: if I'm building locally (I don't want to use github) do I need a real partition to do the build in, or can I just build in a directory?

Yes, you should be able to do it in a directory.

There might be a recipe for a console only version. Which type of system are you planning on generating?

[eml-deb]

Thanks - I'll give a directory build a go. The image can be anything at all, as long as it can fetch a remote image and dd it to a disk. It would be nice if it was a recent Debian, but it doesn't really matter.

[peebee]

Woof-CE works at the package level - not at the "image" level..... Woof-CE builds the .sfs components of a "frugal install" and an .iso.....

If you want 64-bit build maybe start with:
https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... bookworm64

and cut it down to your requirements:
PKGS_SPECS_TABLE in:
https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... n-bookworm

PETBUILDS in:
https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... build.conf

[williwaw]

Thanks - I'll give a directory build a go. The image can be anything at all, as long as it can fetch a remote image and dd it to a disk. It would be nice if it was a recent Debian, but it doesn't really matter.

most puppys are built with configurations that are not that friendly for use at the console, and not being familer with woof-ce, I cannot advise how to build for an optomized console runlevel.

hope you can share your results and/or recipe should you choose bookworm

[hikohan]

MOST Puppy Linux support text mode,

Bootup with pfix=nox in kernel option.

[Zimpler]

Just a side note - if your text in that mode is really small, make it super nice if running bookwormpup via apt with these two packages:

fonts-terminus
console-setup

run:
dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

For my usage, and especially because I like larger fonts at the cli, (and even in VT's) in the menu I select these three:

UTF-8
Guess Optimal Character Set
TerminusBold 16x32

[dimkr]

It should be very easy to build a text-only "Puppy" using https://github.com/vanilla-dpup/woof-CE. If follow the instructions but first delete from this line to this line plus remove all graphical applications from here, what's left is a text-only distro.

If you want something stable and very similar to today's Puppy, then this is not a good option. Everything is in development and it uses Debian testing packages.

[eml-deb]

Sorry, been trying to make a living for the past couple of weeks, but back on the job now.

I've just tried dimkr's instructions (thanks) for vanilla-dpup, if only because they seem comprehensive, and I have to start somewhere.

However, I'm not actually running on Puppy Linux (and I'm not using Github). I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that I can run woof-CE from any suitable environment, and I'd like to give that a go. So, I've spun up a Ubuntu 24.01 VM, and cloned vanilla-dpup/woof-CE.

I don't really need to build a kernel, but I'd like to get the procedure working. The kernel build fails because it can't find bc, even though bc is installed. After some thought it seems to me that the Kbuild makefile must be running in a chroot jail, with no /usr/bin/bc.

Is this correct? If the kernel build is running under chroot, what tools are actually in the jail, and how did they get there? Is there an easy way to run 'bare', since I'm in a VM anyway, and there's nothing to break? Thanks.

[dimkr]

the kernel build fails because it can't find bc, even though bc is installed.

My woof-CE fork has only one dependency (debootstrap) and everything else, including the kernel build process, is done inside a chroot environment.

The build should succeed as long as the package list contains everything needed to build the kernel. It doesn't matter if you don't have bc on the host OS, as long as the list of packages to include in the build contains bc.

[eml-deb]

Thanks - that was it. I've added bc at line 189 in the trixie deps file you referenced (it's needed to create include/generated/timeconst.h; see the Kbuild file). I've left the build running - I'm guessing it'll take a couple of hours.

The 1download step produces an error:

/usr/sbin/mkinitramfs: 122: cannot open /sys/module/firmware_class/parameters/path: No such file

however, I don't think this matters, as it's in the Jenkins log for a recent Debian build.