ABOUT

mkxpud is an image generator for xPUD project (http://www.xpud.org).

It is a binary-level build system that reads project config (named cookbook), parses it with package settings (called recipe), strips directly from a working APT/dpkg-based Linux installation, extracts them into rootfs and finally generates xPUD image.

REQUIREMENTS

To generate a xPUD image, you will need:

1. a working Ubuntu 9.10 installation
2. sudo permission to install packages on the host and testing
3. Internet access to download packages (if required)
4. at least 500MB of hard disk free space

We designed mkxpud to be distribution-independent, but at current development stage, only limited distributions and released version have been fully tested. If you find something wrong or want to improve the function on different distribution, please post on our forum or bug tracker.

BUILDING

Quick Start:

1. Check out the latest source code:

   git clone git://github.com/penk/mkxpud.git
   

2. Build the rootfs and generate the image:

   ./tools/mkxpud all
   

3. Test your result:

   ./tools/mkxpud test
   

This will create an iso9669 image at deploy/default.iso. For step-by-step tutorial, please read Wiki for more instructions.

Usage:

• Basic usage of mkxpud:

  mkxpud <option> [<project name>] 
  

If you doesn't specify the project name, it will create a project called default, by using the configuration file config/default.cookbook.

• To generate specified project:

  ./tools/mkxpud all example
  

It will use config/example.cookbook as configuration instead.

• To test generated image:

  ./tools/mkxpud test 
  

This requires QEMU installed on host and at least 384MB of ram to run virtual machine.

• To re-generate image:

  ./tools/mkxpud image
  

More information please read the output of ./tools/mkxpud help

CONFIGURATION

• Project configuration, cookbook:

A project configuration of mkxpud is named with .cookbook as filename extension.

Lines beginning with # are for comments, and there are sections which quoted by [ ], rest of the rows are data:

[config]
# short project description
MKXPUD_NAME="xPUD Ubuntu Karmic image"
# you can skip the package manager handling by setting this to `skip'
MKXPUD_PKGMGR="apt-get install -y"
# set to `true' if you want to include host /dev nodes
MKXPUD_HOST_DEV="false"

# specified the Linux kernel version to be used
MKXPUD_KERNEL="2.6.31.2"
MKXPUD_KERNEL_IMAGE="deploy/vmlinuz-2.6.31.2"
MKXPUD_MOD_PATH="/lib/modules/2.6.31.2"

[module]
# kernel modules to be included into rootfs
# the dependencies will be handled recursively

[recipe]
# packages and files to be included into rootfs

[opt]
# packages and files that will be generated aside rootfs

[action]
# the command that will be executed after rootfs created

[overwrite]
# files to be overwritten at system-wide 
# not yet implemented

[obfuscate]
# files to be compressed if `upx' is installed on the host

[remove]
# files to be removed after rootfs extraction
# not yet implemented

[image]
# image format that will be generated. CPIO is default
gz iso zip

More information please read the example file config/default.cookbook

• Package configuration, recipe:

mkxpud takes several recipe files to cook an image:

[name]
# name of this recipe

[package]
# packages to be installed via apt-get or some other package manager

#---------------------------

[action]
# actions to be executed before install this recipe
# for example, you can download or checkout codes here

[post_action]
# actions to be executed after install this recipe
# for example, you can download or checkout codes here

#---------------------------

[binary]
# binaries to be copied from your host to target
# these data will be handle by ldd-helper 
# and the *.so.* files are copied automatically 

[sd_hook]
# for binaries or libraries under irregular path
# data will be handle by ldd-helper 
# and the *.so.* files are copied automatically 

#---------------------------

[data]
# other necessary data to be used with applications
# for example /usr/share/* and /usr/lib/*
# these will be copied from your host to target directory

[config]
# configuration files to be overwritten 
# these will be copied from the "package/config" directory

[alternative]
# project-specified configuration files
# under "package/config/alternative/$MKXPUD_CODENAME/" 

[overwrite]
# system-wide files to be overwritten
# these will be copied from the "skeleton/overwrite" directory

Please read files under package/recipe/ as examples.

STRUCTURE

This is the internal structure of mkxpud:

.
|-- README                  the file you're reading
|-- config
|   `-- default.cookbook            default config file for project
|-- deploy
|   `-- vmlinuz-2.6.31.2            pre-built kernel image
|-- kernel
|   |-- config-2.6.31.2
|   |-- config-busybox-1.15.2
|   `-- module              pre-built kernel module
|-- package
|   |-- config              config files to be copied to target
|   `-- recipe              config files for package
|-- skeleton    
|   |-- archive             3rd-parties data to be used whle building
|   |-- boot                boot loader and installer 
|   |-- overwrite               data to be copied to target 
|   `-- rootfs.tgz              skeleton rootfs
|-- tools
|   `-- mkxpud              the main script 
`-- working                 working and temporary files 

REFERENCE

• Project website: http://www.xpud.org
• Repository host: http://github.com/penk/mkxpud
• Developer forum: http://groups.google.com/group/pud-linux
• Bug tracker: http://code.google.com/p/xpud/issues/list

LICENSE

Copyright (c) 2009-2010, Ping-Hsun Chen.

Except the file that comes with its own license, the rest of mkxpud is free. You are free to distribute and/or modify this software under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL file.

AUTHOR

Ping-Hsun Chen (penk) penkia@gmail.com

This project is under heavy development, and we're looking forward to any kind of feedback. If you have suggestion or find something wrong, please contact me directly. :-)

• penkia@gmail.com
• @penk on Twitter
• http://penkia.blogspot.com