livemedia-creator - Man Page

livemedia-creator — Live Media Creator Documentation

Authors

Brian C. Lane <bcl@redhat.com>

livemedia-creator uses Anaconda, kickstart and Lorax to create bootable media that use the same install path as a normal system installation. It can be used to make live isos, bootable (partitioned) disk images, tarfiles, and filesystem images for use with virtualization and container solutions like libvirt, docker, and OpenStack.

The general idea is to use qemu with kickstart and an Anaconda boot.iso to install into a disk image and then use the disk image to create the bootable media.

livemedia-creator --help will describe all of the options available. At the minimum you need:

--make-iso to create a final bootable .iso or one of the other --make-* options.

--iso to specify the Anaconda install media to use with qemu.

--ks to select the kickstart file describing what to install.

To use livemedia-creator with virtualization you will need to have qemu installed.

If you are going to be using Anaconda directly, with --no-virt mode, make sure you have the anaconda-tui package installed.

Conventions used in this document:

lmc is an abbreviation for livemedia-creator.

builder is the system where livemedia-creator is being run

image is the disk image being created by running livemedia-creator

Create Live Install Media

usage: livemedia-creator [-h]
                         (--make-iso | --make-disk | --make-fsimage | --make-appliance | --make-ami | --make-tar | --make-tar-disk | --make-pxe-live | --make-ostree-live | --make-oci | --make-vagrant)
                         [--iso ISO] [--iso-only] [--iso-name ISO_NAME] [--ks KS] [--image-only]
                         [--no-virt] [--proxy PROXY] [--anaconda-arg ANACONDA_ARGS]
                         [--armplatform ARMPLATFORM] [--location LOCATION] [--logfile LOGFILE]
                         [--lorax-templates LORAX_TEMPLATES] [--tmp TMP] [--resultdir RESULT_DIR]
                         [--macboot] [--nomacboot] [--extra-boot-args EXTRA_BOOT_ARGS] [-r RELEASE]
                         [-t VARIANT] [-b URL] [--isfinal] [--disk-image DISK_IMAGE] [--keep-image]
                         [--fs-image FS_IMAGE] [--image-name IMAGE_NAME]
                         [--tar-disk-name TAR_DISK_NAME] [--fs-label FS_LABEL]
                         [--image-size-align IMAGE_SIZE_ALIGN] [--image-type IMAGE_TYPE]
                         [--qemu-arg QEMU_ARGS] [--qcow2] [--qcow2-arg QEMU_ARGS]
                         [--compression COMPRESSION] [--compress-arg COMPRESS_ARGS]
                         [--app-name APP_NAME] [--app-template APP_TEMPLATE] [--app-file APP_FILE]
                         [--ram MEMORY] [--cpu CPU] [--vcpus VCPUS] [--vnc VNC] [--arch ARCH]
                         [--kernel-args KERNEL_ARGS] [--firmware FW_PATH] [--virt-uefi] [--no-kvm]
                         [--with-rng WITH_RNG] [--dracut-conf DRACUT_CONF] [--dracut-arg DRACUT_ARGS]
                         [--live-rootfs-size LIVE_ROOTFS_SIZE] [--live-rootfs-keep-size]
                         [--oci-config OCI_CONFIG] [--oci-runtime OCI_RUNTIME]
                         [--vagrant-metadata VAGRANT_METADATA] [--vagrantfile VAGRANTFILE]
                         [--project PRODUCT] [-p PRODUCT] [--releasever RELEASEVER] [--volid VOLID]
                         [--squashfs-only] [--rootfs-type ROOTFSTYPE] [--timeout TIMEOUT] [-V]

Run this to create a bootable live iso:

sudo livemedia-creator --make-iso \
--iso=/extra/iso/boot.iso --ks=./docs/fedora-livemedia.ks

You can run it directly from the lorax git repo like this:

sudo PATH=./src/sbin/:$PATH PYTHONPATH=./src/ ./src/sbin/livemedia-creator \
--make-iso --iso=/extra/iso/boot.iso \
--ks=./docs/fedora-livemedia.ks --lorax-templates=./share/

You can observe the installation using vnc. The logs will show what port was chosen, or you can use a specific port by passing it. eg. --vnc vnc:127.0.0.1:5

This is usually a good idea when testing changes to the kickstart. lmc tries to monitor the logs for fatal errors, but may not catch everything.

There are 2 stages, the install stage which produces a disk or filesystem image as its output, and the boot media creation which uses the image as its input. Normally you would run both stages, but it is possible to stop after the install stage, by using --image-only, or to skip the install stage and use a previously created disk image by passing --disk-image or --fs-image

When creating an iso qemu boots using the passed Anaconda installer iso and installs the system based on the kickstart. The %post section of the kickstart is used to customize the installed system in the same way that current spin-kickstarts do.

livemedia-creator monitors the install process for problems by watching the install logs. They are written to the current directory or to the base directory specified by the --logfile command. You can also monitor the install by using a vnc client. This is recommended when first modifying a kickstart, since there are still places where Anaconda may get stuck without the log monitor catching it.

The output from this process is a partitioned disk image. kpartx can be used to mount and examine it when there is a problem with the install. It can also be booted using kvm.

When creating an iso the disk image's / partition is copied into a formatted filesystem image which is then used as the input to lorax for creation of the final media.

The final image is created by lorax, using the templates in /usr/share/lorax/live/ or the live directory below the directory specified by --lorax-templates. The templates are written using the Mako template system with some extra commands added by lorax.

NOTE:

The docs/ directory includes several example kickstarts, one to create a live desktop iso using GNOME, and another to create a minimal disk image. When creating your own kickstarts you should start with the minimal example, it includes several needed packages that are not always included by dependencies.

Or you can use existing spin kickstarts to create live media with a few changes. Here are the steps I used to convert the Fedora XFCE spin.

1.

Flatten the xfce kickstart using ksflatten

2.

Add zerombr so you don't get the disk init dialog

3.

Add clearpart --all

4.

Add swap partition

5.

bootloader target

6.

Add shutdown to the kickstart

7.

Add network --bootproto=dhcp --activate to activate the network This works for F16 builds but for F15 and before you need to pass something on the cmdline that activate the network, like sshd:

livemedia-creator --kernel-args="sshd"

8.

Add a root password:

rootpw rootme
network --bootproto=dhcp --activate
zerombr
clearpart --all
bootloader --location=mbr
part swap --size=512
shutdown

9.

In the livesys script section of the %post remove the root password. This really depends on how the spin wants to work. You could add the live user that you create to the %wheel group so that sudo works if you wanted to.

passwd -d root > /dev/null

10.

Remove /etc/fstab in %post, dracut handles mounting the rootfs

cat /dev/null > /dev/fstab

Do this only for live iso's, the filesystem will be mounted read only if there is no /etc/fstab

11.

Don't delete initramfs files from /boot in %post

12.

When creating live iso's you need to have, at least, these packages in the %package section:: dracut-config-generic dracut-live -dracut-config-rescue grub2-efi syslinux

NOTE:

The kickstart must contain part / --size=1024 in order to set the size of the root filesystem's disk image. Other partitions may be included, depending on the image type being created. autopart cannot be supported due to lmc needing to create the disk image file before running the installer on it.

url --url=PRIMARY-REPO-URL --proxy=PROXY-URL
repo --name="repo1" --baseurl=FIRST-REPO-URL --proxy=PROXY-URL
repo --name="repo2" --baseurl=SECOND-REPO_URL --proxy=PROXY-URL

You can create images without using qemu by passing --no-virt on the cmdline. This will use Anaconda's directory install feature to handle the install.  There are a couple of things to keep in mind when doing this:

1. It will be most reliable when building images for the same release that the host is running. Because Anaconda has expectations about the system it is running under you may encounter strange bugs if you try to build newer or older releases.
2. It may totally trash your host. So far I haven't had this happen, but the possibility exists that a bug in Anaconda could result in it operating on real devices. I recommend running it in a virt or on a system that you can afford to lose all data from.

The logs from anaconda will be placed in an ./anaconda/ directory in either the current directory or in the directory used for --logfile

Example cmdline:

sudo livemedia-creator --make-iso --no-virt --ks=./fedora-livemedia.ks

NOTE:

Using no-virt to create a partitioned disk image (eg. --make-disk or --make-vagrant) will only create disks usable on the host platform (BIOS or UEFI). You can create BIOS partitioned disk images on UEFI by using virt.

NOTE:

As of version 30.7 SELinux can be set to Enforcing. The current state is logged for debugging purposes and if there are SELinux denials they should be reported as a bug.

Amazon EC2 images can be created by using the --make-ami switch and an appropriate kickstart file. All of the work to customize the image is handled by the kickstart. The example currently included was modified from the cloud-kickstarts version so that it would work with livemedia-creator.

Example cmdline:

sudo livemedia-creator --make-ami --iso=/path/to/boot.iso --ks=./docs/fedora-livemedia-ec2.ks

This will produce an ami-root.img file in the working directory.

At this time I have not tested the image with EC2. Feedback would be welcome.

livemedia-creator can now replace appliance-tools by using the --make-appliance switch. This will create the partitioned disk image and an XML file that can be used with virt-image to setup a virtual system.

The XML is generated using the Mako template from /usr/share/lorax/appliance/libvirt.xml You can use a different template by passing --app-template <template path>

Documentation on the Mako template system can be found at the Mako site

The name of the final output XML is appliance.xml, this can be changed with --app-file <file path>

The following variables are passed to the template:

The created image can be imported into libvirt using:

You can also create qcow2 appliance images using --image-type=qcow2, for example:

sudo livemedia-creator --make-appliance --iso=/path/to/boot.iso --ks=./docs/fedora-minimal.ks \
--image-type=qcow2 --app-file=minimal-test.xml --image-name=minimal-test.img

livemedia-creator can be used to create un-partitined filesystem images using the --make-fsimage option. As of version 21.8 this works with both qemu and no-virt modes of operation. Previously it was only available with no-virt.

Kickstarts should have a single / partition with no extra mountpoints.

You can name the output image with --image-name and set a label on the filesystem with --fs-label

The --make-tar command can be used to create a tar of the root filesystem. By default it is compressed using xz, but this can be changed using the --compression and --compress-arg options. This option works with both virt and no-virt install methods.

As with --make-fsimage the kickstart should be limited to a single / partition.

For example:

livemedia-creator --make-tar --iso=/path/to/boot.iso --ks=./docs/fedora-minimal.ks \
--image-name=fedora-root.tar.xz

The --make-pxe-live command will produce squashfs image containing live root filesystem that can be used for pxe boot. Directory with results will contain the live image, kernel image, initrd image and template of pxe configuration for the images.

The --make-ostree-live command will produce the same result as --make-pxe-live for installations of Atomic Host.  Example kickstart for such an installation using Atomic installer iso with local repo included in the image can be found in docs/rhel-atomic-pxe-live.ks.

The PXE images can also be created with --no-virt by using the example kickstart in docs/fedora-atomic-pxe-live-novirt.ks. This also works inside the mock environment.

As of lorax version 22.2 you can use livemedia-creator and anaconda version 22.15 inside of a mock chroot with --make-iso and --make-fsimage.

NOTE:

On the host system:

1. yum install -y mock
2. Add a user to the mock group to use for running mock. eg. builder

3. Create a new /etc/mock/ config file based on the rawhide one, or modify the existing one so that the following options are setup:

   config_opts['chroot_setup_cmd'] = 'install @buildsys-build anaconda-tui lorax'
   
   # build results go into /home/builder/results/
   config_opts['plugin_conf']['bind_mount_opts']['dirs'].append(('/home/builder/results','/results/'))

   If you are creating images for a branched release of Fedora you should also enable the updates-testing repository so that you get the latest builds in your mock chroot.

The following steps are run as the builder user who is a member of the mock group.

4.

Make a directory for results matching the bind mount above mkdir ~/results/

5.

Copy the example kickstarts cp /usr/share/docs/lorax/*ks .

6.

Make sure tar and dracut-network are in the %packages section and that the url points to the correct repo

7.

Init the mock mock -r fedora-rawhide-x86_64 --init

8.

Copy the kickstart inside the mock mock -r fedora-rawhide-x86_64 --copyin ./fedora-minimal.ks /root/

9.

Make a minimal iso:

mock -r fedora-rawhide-x86_64 --enable-network --chroot -- livemedia-creator --no-virt \
--resultdir=/results/try-1 --logfile=/results/logs/try-1/try-1.log \
--make-iso --ks /root/fedora-minimal.ks

Results will be in ./results/try-1 and logs under /results/logs/try-1/ including anaconda logs and livemedia-creator logs. The new iso will be located at ~/results/try-1/images/boot.iso, and the ~/results/try-1/ directory tree will also contain the vmlinuz, initrd, etc.

Version 25.0 of livemedia-creator switches to using qemu for virtualization. This allows creation of all image types, and use of the KVM on the host if /dev/kvm is present in the mock environment.

On the host system:

1. yum install -y mock
2. Add a user to the mock group to use for running mock. eg. builder

3. Create a new /etc/mock/ config file based on the rawhide one, or modify the existing one so that the following options are setup:

   config_opts['chroot_setup_cmd'] = 'install @buildsys-build lorax qemu'
   
   # build results go into /home/builder/results/
   config_opts['plugin_conf']['bind_mount_opts']['dirs'].append(('/home/builder/results','/results/'))

   If you are creating images for a branched release of Fedora you should also enable the updates-testing repository so that you get the latest builds in your mock chroot.

The following steps are run as the builder user who is a member of the mock group.

4.

Make a directory for results matching the bind mount above mkdir ~/results/

5.

Copy the example kickstarts cp /usr/share/docs/lorax/*ks .

6.

Make sure tar and dracut-network are in the %packages section and that the url points to the correct repo

7.

Init the mock mock -r fedora-rawhide-x86_64 --init

8.

Copy the kickstart inside the mock mock -r fedora-rawhide-x86_64 --copyin ./fedora-minimal.ks /root/

9.

Copy the Anaconda boot.iso inside the mock mock -r fedora-rawhide-x86_64 --copyin ./boot.iso /root/

10.

Make a minimal iso:

mock -r fedora-rawhide-x86_64 --enable-network --chroot -- livemedia-creator \
--resultdir=/results/try-1 --logfile=/results/logs/try-1/try-1.log \
--make-iso --ks /root/fedora-minimal.ks --iso /root/boot.iso

Results will be in ./results/try-1 and logs under /results/logs/try-1/ including anaconda logs and livemedia-creator logs. The new iso will be located at ~/results/try-1/images/boot.iso, and the ~/results/try-1/ directory tree will also contain the vmlinuz, initrd, etc.

This will run qemu without kvm support, which is going to be very slow. You can add mknod /dev/kvm c 10 232; to create the device node before running lmc.

OpenStack supports partitioned disk images so --make-disk can be used to create images for importing into glance, OpenStack's image storage component. You need to have access to an OpenStack provider that allows image uploads, or setup your own using the instructions from the RDO Project.

The example kickstart, fedora-openstack.ks, is only slightly different than the fedora-minimal.ks one.  It adds the cloud-init and cloud-utils-growpart packages. OpenStack supports setting up the image using cloud-init, and cloud-utils-growpart will grow the image to fit the instance's disk size.

Create a qcow2 image using the kickstart like this:

NOTE:

On the RHEL7 version of lmc --image-type isn't supported. You can only create a bare partitioned disk image.

Import the resulting disk image into the OpenStack system, either via the web UI, or glance on the cmdline:

glance image-create --name "fedora-openstack" --is-public true --disk-format qcow2 \
--container-format bare --file ./fedora-openstack.qcow2

If qcow2 wasn't used then --disk-format should be set to raw.

Use lmc to create a tarfile as described in the TAR File Creation section, but substitute the fedora-docker.ks example kickstart which removes the requirement for core files and the kernel.

You can then import the tarfile into docker like this (as root):

And then run bash inside of it:

The OCI is a new specification that is still being worked on. You can read more about it at the Open Container Initiative website. You can create OCI images using the following command:

sudo livemedia-creator --make-oci --oci-config /path/to/config.json --oci-runtime /path/to/runtime.json \
--iso=/path/to/boot.iso --ks=/path/to/fedora-minimal.ks

You must provide the config.json and runtime.json files to be included in the bundle, their specifications can be found on the OCI github project output will be in the results directory with a default name of bundle.tar.xz

This will work with --no-virt and inside a mock since it doesn't use any partitioned disk images.

Vagrant images can be created using the following command:

sudo livemedia-creator --make-vagrant --vagrant-metadata /path/to/metadata.json \
--iso=/path/to/boot.iso --ks=/path/to/fedora-vagrant.ks

The image created is a vagrant-libvirt provider image and needs to have vagrant setup with libvirt before you can use it.

The --vagrant-metadata file is optional, it will create a minimal one by default, and if one is passed it will make sure the disk size  is setup correctly. If you pass a --vagrant-vagrantfile it will be included in the image verbatim. By default no vagrantfile is created.

There is an example Vagrant kickstart file in the docs directory that sets up the vagrant user with the default insecure SSH pubkey and a few useful utilities.

This also works with --no-virt, but will not work inside a mock due to its use of partitioned disk images and qcow2.

Partitioned disk images can only be created for the same platform as the host system (BIOS or UEFI). You can use virt to create BIOS images on UEFI systems, and it is also possible to create UEFI images on BIOS systems using OVMF firmware and qemu.

Install the lorax-lmc-virt package, this will install qemu and the OVMF firmware files.

Now you can run livemedia-creator with --virt-uefi to boot and install using UEFI:

sudo livemedia-creator --make-disk --virt-uefi --iso=/path/to/boot.iso \
--ks=/path/to/fedora-minimal.ks

Make sure that the kickstart you are using creates a /boot/efi partition by including this:

part /boot/efi --fstype="efi" --size=500

Or use reqpart in the kickstart and Anaconda will create the required partitions.

NOTE:

Sometimes an installation will get stuck. When using qemu the logs will be written to ./virt-install.log and most of the time any problems that happen will be near the end of the file. lmc tries to detect common errors and will cancel the installation when they happen. But not everything can be caught. When creating a new kickstart it is helpful to use vnc so that you can monitor the installation as it happens, and if it gets stuck without lmc detecting the problem you can switch to tty1 and examine the system directly.

If you suspect problems with %pre or %post sections you can redirect the output to the terminal and examine it by logging into the VM. eg.:

%pre
chvt
exec < /dev/tty3 > /dev/tty3 2>/dev/tty3
#do stuff
echo hello world
%end

If it does get stuck the best way to cancel is to use kill -9 on the qemu pid, lmc will detect that the process died and cleanup.

If lmc didn't handle the cleanup for some reason you can do this: 1. sudo umount /tmp/lmc-XXXX to unmount the iso from its mountpoint. 2. sudo rm -rf /tmp/lmc-XXXX 3. sudo rm /var/tmp/lmc-disk-XXXXX to remove the disk image.

Note that lmc uses the lmc- prefix for all of its temporary files and directories to make it easier to find and clean up leftovers.

The logs from the qemu run are stored in virt-install.log, logs from livemedia-creator are in livemedia.log and program.log

You can add --image-only to skip the .iso creation and examine the resulting disk image. Or you can pass --keep-image to keep it around after the iso has been created.

Cleaning up aborted --no-virt installs can sometimes be accomplished by running the anaconda-cleanup script. As of Fedora 18 anaconda is multi-threaded and it can sometimes become stuck and refuse to exit. When this happens you can usually clean up by first killing the anaconda process then running anaconda-cleanup.

Development on this will take place as part of the lorax project, and on the anaconda-devel-list mailing list, and on github

Feedback, enhancements and bugs are welcome.  You can use bugzilla to report bugs against the lorax component.

Weldr Team

2024, Red Hat, Inc.