Debootstrap

Minimal example

You can use debootstrap to generate a chroot environment.

For example, in order to generate a chroot environment based on Debian 8 (Jessie):

debootstrap --arch=amd64 --variant=minbase jessie fs http://ftp.debian.org/debian/

Adding packages

You can add any package you wish by using option --include=<list-of-packages>.

debootstick also needs a small set of packages installed in the image. Thus, if they are not provided in the chroot environment, debootstick will display a message such has:

[...]
I: draft image - installing packages: <list-of-packages>
[...]

Installing these missing packages when running debootstrap (by using option --include=<list-of-packages>) would cause this message to disappear (and debootstick to run faster).