Tiny Arch

Tiny Arch generates a 10M bootable iso with pacman. The iso generated is minimal, just some drivers, busybox commands and pacman.

How to use

Install the package:

mkdir -p /var/abs/local
cd /var/abs/local
wget https://github.com/hackaugusto/tinyarch/archive/master.zip -O tinyarch.zip
unzip tinyarch.zip
rm tinyarch.zip
cd tinyarch-master
makepkg
# [sudo] pacman -U tinyarch-1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

After the install run tinyarch container to create the iso.

To use the image with qemu (using virtio, by default the module for e1000 is not inserted in the image):

qemu-system-x86_64 -device virtio-net,netdev=network0 -netdev user,id=network0 -boot order=d -cdrom tinyarch.iso

Configuration

Inform additional packages to install in the container in the command line tinyarch container {packages}.

Change the configuration file /etc/mkinitcpio-tinyarch.conf to add new FILES or MODULES in the image (the files and modules are copied from the container not the host)

How it works

The script will pacstrap a base system in a temporary folder, copy itself into this base system and run using systemd-nspawn to create the iso. The bootloader is syslinux, the kernel is arch's stock, the iso filesystem is clean and all the binaries are in the initramfs, including pacman.

Boot

Tiny Arch generates an iso image using xorriso, xorriso suports el torito for setting up the boot loader. The image generated by Tiny Arch will use syslinux as it bootload.