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I currently have a linux installation on a usb drive. I would like to take that installation and convert it to an image that can then be transfered to a machine configured to be a network boot server and allow a lab full of computer to boot from that image.

I have tried to google, but I can not seem to find a page that describes to do what I am wanting to do. Perhaps I am not using the right words to when I am searching.

Does anyone have any ideas how to proceed? I server works, I just need to build the image.

H. Smith
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2 Answers2

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Most "live" linuxes uses:

  • Kernel
  • Initrd
  • squashfs

Kernel and initrd is loaded first and booted, then it searches for squashfs and mounts that. The issue here being that how to find the squashfs needs to be specified, and support needs to exist in the initrd scripts to do the work.

So it depends a little on how the current USB is setup. And an alternative could be to create the initrd that contains the full USB. More information is needed about the current setup of the USB

One example of using iPXE and starting a minimal linux can be seen at http://boot.ipxe.org/demo/

NiKiZe
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First you'll need to turn your USB filesystem(s) into a bootable ISO image. Remastersys may do this for you... it can clone a running system as configured.

Once you have the ISO image, you'll need to set up a PXE boot system using a TFTP server, DHCP server with some options, etc.

ivanivan
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  • As soon as the kernel starts, any in memory ISO that has been loaded over PXE will become unavailable, unless the kernel has special modifications to search for the memory space that the ISO was loaded into, reserve that memory space, and make it available as a block device. – NiKiZe Jul 14 '21 at 15:29