lorax - Man Page

OUTPUTDIR

Output directory

-V

show program's version number and exit

-p,  --product

product name

-v,  --version

version identifier

-r,  --release

release information

-s,  --source

source repository (may be listed multiple times)

Default: []

--repo

source dnf repository file

Default: []

-m,  --mirrorlist

mirrorlist repository (may be listed multiple times)

Default: []

-t,  --variant

variant name

Default: ""

-b,  --bugurl

bug reporting URL for the product

Default: "your distribution provided bug reporting tool"

--isfinal

Default: False

-c,  --config

config file

Default: "/etc/lorax/lorax.conf"

--proxy

repo proxy url:port

-i,  --installpkgs

package glob to install before runtime-install.tmpl runs. (may be listed multiple times)

Default: []

-e,  --excludepkgs

package glob to remove before runtime-install.tmpl runs. (may be listed multiple times)

Default: []

--buildarch

build architecture

--volid

volume id

--macboot

Make the iso bootable on UEFI based Mac systems

Default: True

--nomacboot

Do not create a Mac bootable iso

Default: False

--noupgrade

Default: True

--logfile

Path to logfile

Default: ./lorax.log

--tmp

Top level temporary directory

Default: "/var/tmp/lorax"

--cachedir

DNF cache directory. Default is a temporary dir.

--workdir

Work directory, overrides --tmp. Default is a temporary dir under /var/tmp/lorax

--force

Run even when the destination directory exists

Default: False

--add-template

Additional template for runtime image

Default: []

--add-template-var

Set variable for runtime image template

Default: []

--add-arch-template

Additional template for architecture-specific image

Default: []

--add-arch-template-var

Set variable for architecture-specific image

Default: []

--noverify

Do not verify the install root

Default: True

--sharedir

Directory containing all the templates. Overrides config file sharedir

--enablerepo

Names of repos to enable

Default: []

--disablerepo

Names of repos to disable

Default: []

--rootfs-size

Size of root filesystem in GiB. Defaults to 2.

Default: 2

--noverifyssl

Do not verify SSL certificates

Default: False

--dnfplugin

Enable a DNF plugin by name/glob, or * to enable all of them.

Default: []

--squashfs-only

Ignored, provided for backward compatibility.

Default: False

--skip-branding

Disable automatic branding package selection. Use --installpkgs to add custom branding.

Default: False

--rootfs-type

Type of rootfs: squashfs,squashfs-ext4,erofs,erofs-ext4

Default: "squashfs"

--dracut-conf

Path to a dracut.conf file to use instead of the default arguments. See the dracut.conf(5) manpage.

--dracut-arg

Argument to pass to dracut when rebuilding the initramfs. Pass this once for each argument. NOTE: this overrides the defaults.

If a variant is passed to lorax it will select a system-release package that ends with the variant name. eg. Passing --variant workstation will select the fedora-release-workstation package if it exists. It will select a logo package the same way it does for non-variants. eg. fedora-logos.

If there is no package ending with the variant name it will fall back to using the first non-generic package providing system-release.

If --skip-branding is passed to lorax it will skip selecting the system-release, and logos packages and leave it up to the user to pass any branding related packages to lorax using --installpkgs. When using skip-branding you must make sure that you provide all of the expected files, otherwise Anaconda may not work as expected. See the contents of fedora-release and fedora-logos for examples of what to include.

Note that this does not prevent something else in the dependency tree from causing these packages to be included. Using --excludepkgs may help if they are unexpectedly included.

The runtime-install.tmpl template lists packages to be installed using the installpkg command.  This template is fairly simple, installing common packages and architecture specific packages. It must end with the run_pkg_transaction command which tells dnf to download and install the packages.

The runtime-postinstall.tmpl template is where the system configuration happens. The installer environment is similar to a normal running system, but needs some special handling. Configuration files are setup, systemd is told to start the anaconda.target instead of a default system target, and a number of unneeded services are disabled, some of which can interfere with the installation. A number of template commands are used here:

• append to add text to a file.
• chmod changes the file's mode.
• install to install a file into the installroot.
• mkdir makes a new directory.
• move to move a file into the installroot
• replace does text substitution in a file
• remove deletes a file
• runcmd run arbitrary commands.
• symlink creates a symlink
• systemctl runs systemctl in the installroot

The runtime-cleanup.tmpl template is used to remove files that aren't strictly needed by the installation environment. In addition to the remove template command it uses:

• removepkg remove all of a specific package's contents. A package may be pulled in as a dependency, but not really used. eg. sound support.
• removefrom Removes some files from a package. A file glob can be used, or the --allbut option to remove everything except a select few.
• removekmod Removes kernel modules

NOTE:

The erofs options are still experimental.  They require dracut-103 or later in order for the iso to boot, and the kernel erofs driver must support the compression type selected. For more information see the erofs website.

After runtime-*.tmpl templates have finished their work lorax creates the root filesystem in the install.img file.  The anaconda-dracut and dracut-live dracut modules detect the type of rootfs and mounts it for booting. There are currently four possible formats for this file:

• Plain squashfs filesystem (DEFAULT) This can be mounted directly and is simply a squashfs compressed root filesystem. It is created by default, when --squashfs-only, or --rootfs-type squashfs are passed to lorax.
• squashfs compressed ext4 filesystem This creates a LiveOS/rootfs.img ext4 filesystem of the root filesystem and then compresses that with squashfs.  This is selected when passing --rootfs-type squashfs-ext4 to lorax.
• Plain erofs filesystem This can be mounted directly and is an erofs filesystem compressed using the lzma compression algorithm.  This is created when passing --rootfs-type erofs to lorax.
• erofs compressed ext4 filesystem This is like the squashfs-ext4 option except that it uses erofs. It is selected when passing --rootfs-type erofs-ext4 to lorax.

When using erofs the current default is to use lzma compression. You can use the [compression.erofs] section of the lorax configuration file to pass a different compression type and arguments to the mkfs.erofs program. For example to use lz4 with extra options create a lorax.conf file with:

[compression.erofs]
type = lz4
args = -E dedupe,all-fragments -C 65536

And run the build with:

lorax -c ./lorax.conf --rootfs-type erofs ...

The iso creation is handled by another set of templates. The one used depends on the architecture that the iso is being created for. They are also stored in /usr/share/lorax/templates.d/99-generic and are named after the arch, like x86.tmpl and aarch64.tmpl. They handle creation of the tree, copying configuration template files, configuration variable substitution, treeinfo metadata (via the treeinfo template command). Kernel and initrd are copied from the installroot to their final locations and then xorrisofs is run to create the boot.iso