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INSTALLING.md

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Installing Mere Linux

The process for installing Mere Linux to a machine is still fairly manual, but we've tried to make it simple. There are three main methods for installation.

Using the Mere Linux ISO Image

Current images can be found at https://pkgs.merelinux.org/images/.

The Mere Linux ISO runs in a tmpfs, meaning you can change its contents like a real system during your session, including adding or upgrading packages. However, since it is all happening in memory, those changes will not persist through a reboot.

The ISO will by default attempt to start a network device and retrieve an IP address via DHCP. You can check that it has by running ifconfig eth0. A working internet connection will be necessary in order to install any packages.

If you don't see your network device, probably the kernel module for your device has not been built and included. Although we intend to support more hardware, we are currently adding those in slowly. In this case, please run lspci and add the output to a new Github issue.

The ISO also includes the dropbear package to provide ssh access to the tmpfs system, if you should wish. To use it, set a root password, and start the service.

passwd
service start dropbear

Set up a disk for legacy booting

Here is a sample way to install Mere Linux from the running ISO. We'll assume that the physical disk is called /dev/sda. Alternatively, if you want to use EFI booting, skip to Set up a disk for EFI booting.

First, create a single partition, filling the entire disk. Note: This will erase the contents of the disk

sgdisk -Z /dev/sda
sgdisk -N=1 -A 1:set:2 /dev/sda

Inspect the details of the created partition, and note the Partition unique GUID.

sgdisk -i=1
# Grab the unique GUID - we'll need this later
partuuid=$(sgdisk -i=1 /dev/sda 2>&1 | grep unique | awk '{print $NF}')

Now format the new partition. Because we are using a single partition in this example, we have to turn off ext4's 64bit support. You can avoid this by using a separate boot partition.

mkfs.ext4 -O ^64bit /dev/sda1

Mount the new file system:

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

Now skip ahead to Installing the base system.

Set up a disk for EFI booting

Assuming our disk is called /dev/sda, set up two partitions, one for for the EFI boot partition, and one for the root partition. Note: This will erase the contents of the disk

sgdisk -Z /dev/sda
sgdisk -n=1:0:100M /dev/sda
sgdisk -N=2 /dev/sda

Inspect the details of the created root partition, and note the Partition unique GUID.

sgdisk -i=2
# Grab the unique GUID - we'll need this later
partuuid=$(sgdisk -i=2 /dev/sda 2>&1 | grep unique | awk '{print $NF}')

Format the partitions.

mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2

Mount the partitions.

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

Installing the base system

First create the database directory pacman needs to run, then install the base-layout and busybox packages. Although base-layout and busybox are both part of the base group, we install them first separately because the other packages need those to be present to correctly run some of their install hook scripts.

mkdir -p /mnt/var/lib/pacman
pacman -Sy -r /mnt -b /mnt/var/lib/pacman base-layout busybox

Now install the rest of the packages in the base group. When prompted, choose the default selection of 'all'.

pacman -Sy -r /mnt -b /mnt/var/lib/pacman --needed base

Change the root password in the installed system.

chroot /mnt passwd

Set the hostname for the system.

echo 'myhostname' >/mnt/etc/hostname

Tell the initial tty screen to clear itself:

clear >/mnt/etc/issue

Install a basic networking configuration.

cat >/mnt/etc/network/interfaces << EOF
auto lo eth0

iface lo inet loopback

iface eth0 inet dhcp
EOF

echo '127.0.0.1 localhost' >/mnt/etc/hosts

Add an initial /etc/fstab file.

cat > /mnt/etc/fstab << EOF
devpts /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
tmpfs  /dev/shm tmpfs  defaults 0 0
EOF

Configure the boot loader for a legacy boot

If you set up your disks for EFI boot, skip to Configure the boot loader for an EFI boot.

Create the configuration. Make sure the partuuid variable is set to the GUID of the filesystem we created earlier.

mkdir -p /mnt/boot/extlinux
cat >/mnt/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf <<EOF
DEFAULT mere
PROMPT 1
TIMEOUT 30

LABEL mere
  LINUX /boot/vmlinux
  APPEND root=PARTUUID=${partuuid} quiet
EOF

Install the bootloader and prepare the MBR.

extlinux -i /mnt/boot/extlinux
cat /usr/share/syslinux/gptmbr.bin >/dev/sda

At this point you should be able to unmount the volume and restart the machine.

umount /mnt
reboot

Configure the boot loader for an EFI boot

Create the EFI directory and install syslinux to it

mkdir -p /mnt/boot/EFI/BOOT
cp /usr/share/syslinux/efi64/syslinux.efi /mnt/boot/EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi
cp /usr/share/syslinux/efi64/ldlinux.e64 /mnt/boot/EFI/BOOT/

Create the syslinux configuration. Make sure the partuuid variable is set to the GUID of the filesystem we created earlier.

cat >/mnt/boot/EFI/BOOT/syslinux.cfg << EOF
DEFAULT mere
PROMPT 1
TIMEOUT 30

LABEL mere
  LINUX ../../vmlinux
  APPEND root=PARTUUID=${partuuid} quiet
EOF

At this point you should be able to unmount the volume and restart the machine.

umount /mnt/boot
umount /mnt
reboot

Using an existing Linux system

Assuming you already have a running Linux system with a spare disk or partition, you can easily grab Mere's pacman package and install Mere to it. Setting up the partitions and boot loader is left as an exercise to the reader, but you can use the section Using the Mere Linux ISO Image as a generic guide. Note that Mere's kernel currently only supports ext2,3,4 filesystems, but we are open to adding support for more as we mature. If you would like to use a different file system, please create a new Github issue.

First, download pacman.

curl -LO https://pkgs.merelinux.org/core/pacman-latest-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

You can validate the file using the pacman-latest.SHA512SUM file.

curl -LO https://pkgs.merelinux.org/core/pacman-latest.SHA512SUM
sha512sum -c pacman-latest.SHA512SUM

Extract it to a temporary location.

mkdir -p /tmp/pacman
tar -C /tmp/pacman -xf pacman-latest-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

Now you can use /tmp/pacman/usr/bin/pacman --config /tmp/pacman/etc/pacman.conf to install the system in the same way that is described under Installing the base system. Simply replace every usage of pacman with /tmp/pacman/usr/bin/pacman --config /tmp/pacman/etc/pacman.conf.

If you want to use Mere's syslinux package to boot the system, install that package as well, either to a temporary location on the host system, or into the destination system, and use one of the boot methods described in Configure the boot loader for a legacy boot or Configure the boot-loader for an EFI boot.

Using the Mere Linux raw disk image

There is a raw disk image created in essentially the same manner as described above located at https://pkgs.merelinux.org/images/.

There are a lot of ways that this image could be used, but it works really well as a starting point for a virtual machine. It has been successfully used as a Digital Ocean droplet and an Oracle Cloud instance. It should be usable in any cloud provider that supports MBR booting and the VIRTIO kernel drivers.

To use it as a VirtualBox disk, you could do the following, resizing the disk to the size you wish to use.

VBoxManage convertfromraw meredisk.raw meredisk.vdi
VBoxManage modifymedium disk meredisk.vdi --resize <megabytes>

Then simply attach it to a new Linux virtual machine. In the machine settings, under Network->Advanced, be sure to set the Adapter Type to Paravirtualized Network (virtio-net). When the image boots, it will attempt to resize the root file system to fill the entire disk space available.

Unlike the ISO, the disk image has a default password set to merepass. Be sure to change it if you deploy it anywhere.