Building KLF for frugal installation

[wiak]

Whilst no-one had uploaded a KLF iso yet, building one for frugal installation is covered here:

viewtopic.php?p=95981#p95981

[rockedge]

To get the ball rolling I have made a Kennel Linux Fedora (KLF) system available for download and experimentation in the usual place https://rockedge.org/kernels

Direct download:
KLF-b.iso 964 M
SHA1-MD5.txt

At around a 1 G, the download size can be prohibitive, which makes using the build script a tantalizing option.

When running in a virtual machine from ISO booting from ISO, ensure that the virtual HDD is labeled "QEMU"

[Sofiya]

by installing instead of Chromium Firefox, the image became even smaller by 96Mb

[rockedge]

by installing instead of Chromium Firefox, the image became even smaller by 96Mb

That would make the ISO around 869 megs !! About the size of KLV-Airedale and KLV-Spectr

I am going try to build one with out the kernel at all to add the smaller RT kernel if it is possible to exclude the kernel during the initial build. If it is easier I might start with the existing system and switch kernel components

[Sofiya]

by installing instead of Chromium Firefox, the image became even smaller by 96Mb

That would make the ISO around 869 megs !! About the size of KLV-Airedale and KLV-Spectr

I am going try to build one with out the kernel at all to add the smaller RT kernel

I am checking it now
Yes, it works fine, the assembly is assembled without a kernel and firmware.
in f_00_fedora_gui comment out line 5 .and uncomment line 6.

[wiak]

@rockedge do you still have a copy of the iso mentioned for download in this post of yours?

viewtopic.php?p=96640#p96640

The HowTo build KLF fdstrap method is no longer working since the minimal Fedora image used has been removed upstream so I would like to try reverse engineering back to it and then seeing if I can bring it up to date

There is another method that would be better but requires me how to build a raw image from an oci specified container image. Alas I am not great with the likes of docker and thus would have too much research to do to build from the available oci starter. But for now that old iso of yours would provide an at least temporary rootfs workaround maybe.

EDIT: may have found an automated build now by Fedora, but not sure since just downloading to see what it is... ah... no... huge... not what I'm after at all.

[rockedge]

@wiak Like it is in the universe, last week I was reaching a critical point in storage and did some house cleaning. Which it looks like I deleted some of the KLF ISO's after holding on to them for some time. I thought of revisiting building some KLF-rawhide variants so I held on to what appears to be a working version.

This ISO might be of some help. -> KLF-Rawhide-CE-1.0.iso

I think this one is equipped with the XFCE4 desktop environment and was a start to have a super cutting edge KL that was even more that than KLV's are.

Let me know if it helps....I will continue to go through the storage locations looking and in the hope that in some semi-forgotten USB stick one of the KLF designs survived.

[wiak]

@wiak Like it is in the universe, last week I was reaching a critical point in storage and did some house cleaning. Which it looks like I deleted some of the KLF ISO's after holding on to them for some time. I thought of revisiting building some KLF-rawhide variants so I held on to what appears to be a working version.

This ISO might be of some help. -> KLF-Rawhide-CE-1.0.iso

I think this one is equipped with the XFCE4 desktop environment and was a start to have a super cutting edge KL that was even more that than KLV's are.

Let me know if it helps....I will continue to go through the storage locations looking and in the hope that in some semi-forgotten USB stick one of the KLF designs survived.

Thanks. Will download tomorrow. I may try and learn building raw image from OCI container one day, but already todo list too big.

[rockedge]

@wiak while looking over what you posted I found this

To build a "raw image" from an OCI specified container image, you can use a tool like "buildah" to extract the layered filesystem of the container image, essentially creating a raw image by accessing the individual layers and their contents directly, without running the container itself; this involves pulling the OCI image, then using commands to unpack its layers into a desired directory structure.

Key steps:

1. Install buildah:

   • Ensure you have the buildah command-line tool installed on your system, which is designed to work with OCI images.

   • Link to download buildah

2. Pull the OCI image:

   • Use the buildah pull command to download the desired OCI image from a registry.

3. Extract the image layers:

   • Use buildah unmount to create a temporary mount point for the container image.

   • Iterate through the layers of the image using buildah mount to access each layer's filesystem individually.

   • Copy the necessary files and directories from the mounted layer to your desired destination directory.

4. Optional: Process the extracted data:

   • Depending on your use case, you might need to further manipulate the extracted files, like filtering specific files or directories.

   Code: Select all

   #!/bin/sh
   
   # Pull the OCI image
   buildah pull  "registry.example.com/myimage:latest" 
   
   # Extract the image layers to a directory called "raw_image"
   buildah unmount myimage
   
   for layer in $(buildah layers myimage); do
       buildah mount myimage $layer -w /raw_image
   
   # Copy files or directories from the mounted layer to your desired location within "raw_image"
       cp -r /path/to/files/* /raw_image/
       buildah unmount myimage
   
   done
   

   Important considerations:

   1. Understanding OCI image structure:

      • OCI images are essentially layered file systems, where each layer represents a set of changes to the filesystem.

   2. File system manipulation:

      • You'll need to handle file system operations like copying, creating directories, and setting permissions to build your "raw image".

   3. Alternative tools:

      • Other tools like "skopeo" can also be used to interact with OCI images, including extracting their contents.

[wiak]

I'll try that once I have time - looks good @rockedge

Afterall, container using systems like docker use the likes of overlayfs underneath to work with the layers, so the process you outline makes sense to us.

[Clarity]

Hello @wiak I have the following;

Code: Select all

# ls -l KLF*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1286631424 Aug 16  2023 KLF-a.iso
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1150279680 Aug 16  2023 KLF-axz.iso
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  989855744 May 21  2024 KLF-Rawhide-CE-1.2.iso

Question: Would any of these be helpful?

[wiak]

Hello @wiak I have the following;

Code: Select all

# ls -l KLF*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1286631424 Aug 16  2023 KLF-a.iso
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1150279680 Aug 16  2023 KLF-axz.iso
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  989855744 May 21  2024 KLF-Rawhide-CE-1.2.iso

Question: Would any of these be helpful?

They might, but I remain too busy and become inclined to use oci mechanism per the links rockedge posted; that looks like the best future approach anyway. There is an alternative approach to producing a KLF I used in firstribit, but I haven't checked it out again yet.