ArchStrike: Customized Arch Linux ISO

The ArchStrike ISO installs our unofficial user repository mirror through a guided installation process using archinstall. Our customized Arch Linux image uses archiso, which builds the official Arch Linux images.

Requirements

Before you build or test, make sure to install any dependencies needed (i.e., archiso dependencies)

sudo pacman -S --needed make devtools edk2-ovmf erofs-utils openssl qemu
sudo pacman -S --needed arch-install-scripts bash dosfstools e2fsprogs libarchive libisoburn mtools squashfs-tools shellcheck

Submodule

A fixed version of the archiso repository is embedded as a submodule to create the ArchStrike image.

sudo pacman -S --needed make devtools
git submodule update --init --recursive --remote

Creating the ArchStrike ISO

To build the ArchStrike ISO, simply run make in userland. Equivalently, you can run each target in userland.

make check
make clean
make build-iso
make sign

To use a non-default gpg key to sign, run GPG_OPTIONS="--default-key <your-key-id>" make sign in userland.

To change the output location to say /tmp, run BUILD_DIR=/tmp/archstrike-iso-build make.

Developer Notes

Over time packages change, check for issues prior to attempting to install the entire archstrike package group. You can do so by running the following commands in userland.

./bin/archstrike-arbitration --package archstrike
./bin/archstrike-arbitration --file ./configs/archstrike/packages.x86_64

This should report a list of packages you can use to stdout and report issues to stderr by analyzing input.

Sync Submodule with Upstream

The archiso submodule points to the ArchStrike fork and the submodule URL default uses the HTTPS protocol. If you prefer to authenticate using SSH, then update the URL within the submodule.

git -C archiso config remote.origin.url git@github.com:ArchStrike/archiso.git

If configured correctly, then you will be able to push changes to ArchStrike/archiso and keep it up-to-date with upstream.

git -C archiso remote add upstream git@github.com:archlinux/archiso.git
git -C archiso fetch upstream
git -C archiso rebase upstream/master master
git -C archiso push

Latest ISO Tracking

Breaking changes in archiso can block the critical path for doing a new ISO release. The latest successful ISO build is tracked on master.

git -C archiso fetch upstream
git -C archiso rebase upstream/master master
git -C archiso push
latest="$(git -C archiso describe --abbrev=0)"
git -C archiso checkout -b ${latest} refs/tags/${latest}
git -C archiso push -u origin refs/heads/${latest}
git submodule set-branch --branch "${latest}" archiso
git add .gitmodules archiso
git commit -m "Updated archiso submodule branch to ${latest}"
git tag -a archiso-${latest} -m "Submodule archiso branch and SHA-1 index updated to latest: refs/tags/${latest}"
git push origin HEAD refs/tags/archiso-${latest}

Mirror Performance

If you would like to improve build performance, you may wish to optimize your mirror list. Update your mirrorlist with a ranked mirrorlist by executing the following in userland.

reflector --country US --age 6 --score 30 --sort rate --save /tmp/mirrorlist
sudo cp -bv {/tmp,/etc/pacman.d}/mirrorlist

Test Arch Installer Script w/o ISO

These instructions are based on the upstream README.md for archinstall. Before starting, check the upstream documentation and make sure that /dev/loop0p* does not exist from previous testing.

truncate -s 10G testimage.img
sudo losetup -fP ./testimage.img
sudo losetup -a | grep "testimage.img" | awk -F ":" '{print $1}'
sudo pacman -Sy --needed archinstall

To smoke test the script, run the command below

pushd test
sudo archinstall --config ./profiles/test-loop0.json --disk_layouts=$(realpath ./profiles/ami-disk-layout.json) --script archstrike-guided
popd

To test USA default configuration profile, run the command below.

pushd ./configs/archstrike/airootfs/root/.config/archinstall/
sudo archinstall --config ./profiles/usa-default.json --script archstrike-guided
popd

To test the advanced configuration profile, run the command below.

pushd ./configs/archstrike/airootfs/root/.config/archinstall/
sudo archinstall --config ./profiles/advanced.json --script archstrike-guided
popd

To test the AMI configuration profile, run the command below.

pushd ./configs/archstrike/airootfs/root/.config/archinstall/
sudo pacman -Sy --need qemu-block-iscsi
sudo archinstall --config ./profiles/ami-default.json --disk_layouts=$(realpath ./profiles/ami-disk-layout.json) --silent
qemu-img convert -f raw -O vmdk -o adapter_type=lsilogic,subformat=streamOptimized,compat6 testimage.img archstrike.vmdk
aws s3 cp ./archstrike.vmdk s3://archstrike-iso
gpg -sb ./archstrike.vmdk 
aws s3 cp ./archstrike.vmdk.sig s3://archstrike-iso
aws ec2 import-image --description "ArchStrike Disk" --disk-containers "file://./cloud/aws-disk-image.json"
aws ec2 describe-import-image-tasks --import-task-ids "import-ami-0955350d57cee9d29
popd

Once complete, you should see a message stating Installation completed without any errors. If you wish to virtualize your test, then use qemu and your testimage.img.

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -machine q35,accel=kvm -device intel-iommu -cpu host -m 4096 -boot order=d -drive file=./testimage.img,format=raw -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly,file=/usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF_CODE.fd -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly,file=/usr/share/ovmf/x64/OVMF_VARS.fd

Using ramdisk may improve I/O performance when running make. To set mount ramdisk to /opt/archstrike-iso-build, try the running ./bin/init-ramdisk-build.

Test ArchStrike ISO in QEMU

Set the variable image value as the absolute path to the ArchStrike ISO.

image="${BUILD_DIR:-/opt/archstrike-iso-build}/out/archstrike-"$(date '+%Y.%m.%d')"-x86_64.iso"

Run the ArchStrike image using QEMU (boot type BIOS):

./archiso/scripts/run_archiso.sh -b -i ${image}

Run the ArchStrike image using QEMU (boot type UEFI):

./archiso/scripts/run_archiso.sh -u -i ${image}