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diff --git a/manpages/live-initramfs.7 b/manpages/live-initramfs.7 new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d35e018 --- /dev/null +++ b/manpages/live-initramfs.7 @@ -0,0 +1,84 @@ +.TH CASPER 7 "Thu, 28 Sep 2006" "1.69" "Initramfs-tools hook" + +.SH NAME +casper \- a hook for initramfs-tools to boot live systems. + +.SH SYNOPSIS +.B BOOT=casper +As kernel parameter boot prompt. + +.SH DESCRIPTION +Casper is a hook for initramfs-tools used to generate an initramfs capable to boot live systems as those created by make-live. This includes the Debian-Live isos, netboot tarballs, and usb stick images and Ubuntu live cds. At boot time it will look for a (read-only) media containing a "/casper" directory where a root filesystems (often a compressed squashfs) is stored. If found, it will create a writable environment, using unionfs, for debian like systems to boot from. + +.SH RECOGNIZED BOOT OPTIONS +.TP +.B live-getty +This enables a special "serial" login shell (experimental). +.TP +.B xdebconf +uses xdebconfigurator, if present on the rootfs, to configure X instead of the standard procedure (experimental). +.TP +.BI "hostname=" HOSTNAME " , userfullname=" USERFULLNAME " , username=" USERNAME +Those parameters lets you override values read from the config file. +.TP +.BI "{keyb|kbd-chooser/method}=" KEYBOARD " , {klayout|console-setup/layoutcode}=" LAYOUT " , {kvariant|console-setup/variantcode}=" VARIANT " , {kmodel|console-setup/modelcode}=" CODE " , koptions=" OPTIONS +Configure the running keyboard as specified, if this one misses casper behaves as if "keyb=us" was specified. It will be interfered from "locale=" if locale is only 2 lowecase letters as a special case. You could also specify console layout, variant, code, and options (no defaults). +.TP +.BI ip= IFACE,ADDRESS,NETMASK,GATEWAY [ :IFACE,ADDRESS,NETMASK,GATEWAY "]*" +Let you specify the name(s) and the options of the interface(s) that should be configured at boot time. Do not specify this if you want to use dhcp (default). +.TP +.BR ip[= frommedia ] +If this variable is set, dhcp and static configuration are just skipped and the system will use the (must be) media-preconfigured /etc/network/interfaces instead. +.TP +.BI "{live-media|bootfrom}=" DEVICE +If you specify one of this two equivalent forms, casper will first try to find this device for the "/casper" directory where the read-only root filesystem should reside. If it did not find something usable, the normal scan for block devices is performed. +.TP +.BI "live-media-offset=" BYTES +This way you could tell casper that your image starts at offset BYTES in the above specified or autodiscovered device, this could be useful to hide the debian-live iso or image inside another iso or image, to create "clean" images. +.TP +.BI "locale=" LOCALE " | debian-installer/locale=" LOCALE +Configure the running locale as specified, if not present the live-media rootfs configured locale will be used and if also this one misses casper behave as "locale=en_US.UTF-8" was specified. If only 2 lowercase letter are specified (like "it"), the "maybe wanted" locale is generated (like it:IT.UTF-8), in this case if also "keyb=" is unspecified is set with those 2 lowercase letters (keyb=it). +.TP +.BR "netboot[=" nfs "|" cifs ] +This tells casper to perform a network mount. The parameter "nfsroot=" (with optional "nfsopts="), should specify where is the location of the root filesystem. With no args, will try cifs first, and if it fails nfs. +.TP +.B persistent +Casper will look for persistent and snapshot partitions or files labeled "casper-rw", "home-rw", and files called "casper-sn*", "home-sn*" and will try to, in order: mount as /cow the first, mount the second in /home, and just copy the contents of the latter in appropriate locations (snapshots). Snapshots will be tried to be updated on reboot/shutdown. Look at live-snapshot(1) for more informations. +.TP +.B nopersistent +disables the above mentioned "persistent" feature, useful if the bootloader (like syslinux) has been installed with persistent enabled. +.TP +.B "showmounts" +This parameter will make casper to show on "/" the ro filesystems (mostly compressed) on /casper. This is not enabled by default because could lead to problems by applications like "mono" which store binary paths on installation. +.TP +.BI "todisk=" DEVICE +Adding this parameter, casper will try to copy the entire read-only media to the specified device before mounting the root filesystem. It probably needs a lot of free space. Subsequent boots should then skip this step and just specify the "live-media=DEVICE" boot parameter with the same DEVICE used this time. +.TP +.B toram +Adding this parameter, casper will try to copy the whole read-only media to the computer's RAM before mounting the root filesystem. This could need a lot of ram, according to the space used by the read-only media. +.TP +.BI "{preseed/file|file}=" FILE +A path to a file present on the rootfs could be used to preseed debconf database. +.TP +.BI "package/question=" VALUE +All debian installed packages could be preseeded from command-line that way, beware of blanks spaces, they will interfere with parsing, use a preseed file in this case. + +.SH FILES +.B /etc/live.conf +some variables can be configured via this config file. + +.SH BUGS +.B casper +works fully on amd64, i386 and ppc, it should also run on other archs. + +.SH HOMEPAGE +Debian Live project <http://live.debian.net/> + +.SH SEE ALSO +.BR live-snapshot(1), initramfs-tools(8), make-live(8), make-live.conf(5) + +.SH AUTHOR +casper was written by Tollen Fog Heen <tfheen@canonical.com>, Matt Zimmerman <mdz@canonical.com>, and Marco Amadori <marco.amadori@gmail.com>. +.TP +This manual page was written by Marco Amadori <marco.amadori@gmail.com>, +for the Debian project (but may be used by others). |