Image Creation（mic2）

Image Creation

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Overview

This is the main Image Creator developer's guide. For a more simplistic, step-by-step document, go to: Image Creation For Beginners.

The tool used to create MeeGo images is something called "MIC2" (for distinguishing from obsolete MIC - Moblin Image Creator). MIC is composed of a series of tools to create images, convert images and do some development work on MeeGo. MIC2 is based primarily on Fedora livecd-tools and appliance-tools.

With MIC2 tools, users can create different types of images for different purposes, including live CD images, live USB images, raw images for KVM, VMDK images for Vmware, vdi images for VirtualBox, loop images for IVI platforms, NAND images for Moorestown platforms, ubi images for N900, fs image for MeeGo developers. Also, users can use MIC2 tools to manipulate images like transforming an image from a virtual machine to a live image, and providing a chroot environment based on an existing live image. With these features, developers can do development work on a host virtual machine running MeeGo or a Meego chroot environment, and transfer the resulting new live image to a target device for final debug/verification.

This document discusses only features, usage guide, and known issues.

Features

MIC2 offers these major tools:

• mic-image-creator: create images.
• mic-image-convertor: convert a raw/vmdk/vdi/live image into a live image.
• mic-chroot: provide a MeeGo environment from a live/loop image for development, it also can translate that chroot file system into a live image.
• mic-image-writer: write a MeeGo image to a USB disk. This is a safe alternative to dd.

The following support is provided:

• Supports mainstream Linux distros. MIC2 has been thoroughly tested on these distributions:
  • Meego
  • Fedora (Fedora 10 and above)
  • Opensuse (> OpenSUSE 11.1)
  • and Ubuntu > 9.04
• Supports various types of images: livecd, liveusb, loop, raw, vmdk, nandmrst, vdi, fs, ubi
• Supports image coversion from virtual machine/live images to live images.
• Uses kickstart (.ks) files for image creation. Through this, users can specify which software repositories to use, which packages to install and basic system configuration directives. Please refer to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Kickstartfor more information about kickstart configuration files.

Usage

Requirements

To be able to use MIC2, your host machine to run mic2 must have Intel(r) Atom(tm) or Intel(r) Core(tm) 2 CPU (support for SSSE3), this is a hard requirement (ARM image is exceptional), the following packages must be available on your system. (Most of the packages are installed by default, depending on the distribution.):

• yum
• rpm
• kpartx
• parted
• syslinux
• isomd5sum
• kvm
• zlib-devel(for compiling)
• python-devel(for installation)

You should load these modules as well, if not loaded automatically by the kernel: 
(Use lsmod to list modules.)

• squashfs
• squashfs-tools
• dm_snapshot
• loop

Specific packages for Fedora:

• pykickstart
• device-mapper

Specific packages for Ubuntu 8.10:

• python-celementtree
• python-elementtree
• dmsetup

Installing requirements for Ubuntu 10.04

sudo apt-get install yum rpm kpartx parted syslinux isomd5sum kvm zlib1g-dev squashfs-tools python2.6-dev qemu-arm-static

Installation

We currently build MIC2 binary rpms/debs for many popular Linux distributions, including Fedora 11, Fedora 12, Ubuntu 9.10, Ubuntu 10.04, OpenSUSE 11.1, OpenSUSE 11.2, and Debian 5.0. Please go to http://repo.meego.com/tools/repos/ to get a repository URL corresponding to your Linux distribution, then add it into your repo or package source for installation and update later. If your distribution isn't in the support list, please install MIC2 from git source.

Binary Package installation

• Installation Steps For Fedora 11, Fedora 12 and Fedora 13

1. Add MIC2 repo as user root:

# cat <<REPO > /etc/yum.repos.d/meego-tools.repo
[meego-tools]
name=MeeGo Tools for Fedora
baseurl=http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/tools/repos/fedora//$releasever
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-meego
REPO

2. Add gpg key as user root:

# gpg2 --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv 0BC7BEC479FC1F8A
# gpg2 --export --armor 0BC7BEC479FC1F8A > /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-meego

3. Install mic2 as user root:

# yum install mic2

if you get asked to import the key do so:

warning: rpmts_HdrFromFdno: Header V3 DSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 79fc1f8a: NOKEY
meego-fedora/gpgkey                                                                        | 3.3 kB     00:00 ... 
Importing GPG key 0x79FC1F8A:
 Userid: "Moblin Build (Moblin Build User) <build@moblin.org>"
 From  : /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-meego
Is this ok [y/N]: y

• Update Steps For Fedora 11, Fedora 12 and Fedora 13

You can use the below command to get the latest mic2 package.

# yum update mic2

• Installation Steps For Ubuntu 9.10, Ubuntu 10.04 and Debian 5.0

1. Add package source

For Ubuntu 9.10, add the below line to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/tools/repos/ubuntu/9.10/ /

For Ubuntu 10.04, add the below line to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/tools/repos/ubuntu/10.04/ /

For Ubuntu 10.10, add the below line to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/tools/repos/ubuntu/10.10/ /

For Debian 5.0, add the below line to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/tools/repos/debian/5.0/ /

mic2 is also available in Debian Testing which will become Debian 6.0.

2. sudo apt-get update

You should see the following error: W: GPG error: http://repo.meego.com Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 0BC7BEC479FC1F8A

To add the repository public key use the following command:

gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv 0BC7BEC479FC1F8A

gpg --export --armor 0BC7BEC479FC1F8A | sudo apt-key add -

Now redo sudo apt-get update

3. sudo apt-get install mic2

• Installation Steps For OpenSUSE 11.1, OpenSUSE 11.2 and OpenSUSE 11.3

1. Add repos

For OpenSUSE 11.1:

sudo zypper addrepo http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/tools/repos/opensuse/11.1/ meego-tools

For OpenSUSE 11.2:

sudo zypper addrepo http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/tools/repos/opensuse/11.2/ meego-tools

For OpenSUSE 11.3:

sudo zypper addrepo http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/tools/repos/opensuse/11.3/ meego-tools

2. sudo zypper install mic2

• Update Steps For OpenSUSE 11.1, OpenSUSE 11.2 and OpenSUSE 11.3

sudo zypper update mic2

From Stable Git Source Releases

You can get the latest stable release of MIC2 from the tag section in http://meego.gitorious.org/meego-developer-tools/image-creator. Click on the "Source tree" link on the top of the screen. There will be a list of tags on the right hand side.

You should follow the below steps to install it:

git clone git://gitorious.org/meego-developer-tools/image-creator.git
cd image-creator
git checkout 0.17  #check Gitorious for the most recent tag
make
sudo make install

 

From Development Git Tree

Note: MIC2 GIT tree has latest-and-greatest source, so stability is not guaranteed. If you run into errors, please use a 'Stable Release' instead before filing a bug.

You need to follow the below steps to git clone MIC2:

git clone git://gitorious.org/meego-developer-tools/image-creator.git

Build and install:

cd image-creator
make clean
make
sudo make install

You should add the repo for mic2 then run

sudo ./tools/mic-check-alldeps

to check/install all the depended packages, otherwise mic2 can't work normally.

Running mic-image-creator

Configuration of images is based on kickstart, the format used for unattended installation in Fedora and Redhat.

Super user privileges are needed. The tool is more or less self-documented, use the --help option to see options.

sudo mic-image-creator --help

Creating Supported Image Types

KickStart (.ks) configuration files are passed to MIC2 to create tailored images. KickStart files specify what repos to pull from, what packages to include, what post-scripts to run and what type of images to create.

To obtain the official Meego .ks files, go here: TO-DO-LINK

Create ARMv7 Images

When creating images for ARMv7 hardware, pass --arch=armv7l to mic-image-creator commands.

Create Livecd Image

sudo mic-image-creator --config=default.ks --format=livecd --cache=mycache

This tells image-creator to use the kickstart file default.ks to obtain info about which packages to download and include in the image, and --cache is the directory on your local machine which will host a cache of these packages. The cache is very useful if you are remote to the server and reduces the amount of downloaded packages next time you create an image. Next time the command is run, this cache will simply be 'updated' if there are changes, rather than re-downloading from the repositories again.

The output of this command will be a file named meego-1.0-default-XX.iso created. This ISO image is a hybrid image and can be either written to a disk device or burned onto a cd.

To burn it onto a USB stick, just run the following command, assuming the USB stick is /dev/sdb in your system:

sudo mic-image-writer meego-1.0-default-XX.iso

Create Moorestown NAND Image

sudo mic-image-creator --config=default.ks --format=mrstnand

remove the first 512 bytes from the image to remove the partition information.
sudo dd bs=512 skip=1 if=meego-1.0-default-XX-sda.bin of= meego-1.0-default-XX-nand.img

Create Liveusb Image

sudo mic-image-creator --config=default.ks --format=liveusb --cache=mycache

A file named meego-1.0-default-XX.usbimg will be created. To burn it onto a USB stick, run the following command, assuming the USB stick is /dev/sdb in your system:

sudo mic-image-writer meego-1.0-default-XX.usbimg

This image has a FAT file system and can be mounted easily on Windows and other OSes.

Create Liveusb Image Interactively

sudo mic-image-creator --config=default.ks --format=liveusb --interactive --cache=mycache

It directly creates a MeeGo live usb stick.

Liveusb image can be created in two different ways, interactive and non-interactive (default). When running MIC2 in a non-interactive mode, MIC2 creates a USB images file that can be copied directly into a USB stick. The non-interactive mode can be used for daily build or automated testing. The interactive mode will write the images onto a USB disk, it will detect if a USB stick is available and detects and verifies a partition is available. If two or more USB devices are present, you will be asked to select the target device. This way the contents of the existing USB stick won't be destroyed unless no appropriate partition is found, end user should use it to create the live USB.

Create Loop Image

This is the simplest image format available. Such images can be loop mounted and chrooted into, for example, to build applications or for debugging purposes.

sudo mic-image-creator --config=default.ks --format=loop --cache=mycache

A file named meego-1.0-default-XX.img is created. You can use below to mount it and chroot into it.

sudo mount -o loop meego-1.0-default-XX.img /mnt
sudo chroot /mnt su -

Create KVM Image

Can be used with QEMU or other VMM applications to launch MeeGo as a virtualized instance.

sudo mic-image-creator --config=default.ks --format=raw --cache=mycache

A file named meego-1.0-default-XX folder with a meego-1.0-default-XX-sda.raw image is created. For optimal results, use this feature in a machine with VT support and enable it in the BIOS.

If you use Fedora or openSUSE, run the following command to launch the image into MeeGo KVM virtual machine:

sudo qemu-kvm -m 512 -boot c -hda meego-1.0-default-XX-sda.raw -std-vga

If you use Ubuntu, run the following command launch image:

sudo kvm -m 512 -boot c -hda meego-1.0-default-XX-sda.raw

Create VMDK Image

VMDK images can be loaded into Vmware or Vmware player. MIC2 also generates a VMX file that has image configuration and can be used to launch the image in Vmware by just clicking the file. If you have vmplayer, it should open automatically.

sudo mic-image-creator --config=default.ks --format=vmdk --cache=mycache

A file named meego-1.0-default-XX folder with both meego-1.0-default-XX-sda.vmdk image and meego-1.0-default-XX-sda.vmx is created. Just run vmware or vmware player, and select the generated vmx file.

KickStart Files (configuration files used for image creation)

KickStart (.ks) configuration files are passed to MIC2 to create tailored images. KickStart files specify what repos to pull from, what packages to include, what post-scripts to run and what type of images to create.

For more details about the kickstart format, see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Kickstart.

Note that not all KickStart directives and options are supported for creating Meego images. MIC2 also adds some specific directives and options. More explained below.

Official Meego .ks files

The official Meego .ks files are here:

• For ARM based Nokia N900: http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/builds/trunk/ <version>/handset/images/meego-handset-armv7l-n900/
• For Intel Atom based netbook and handset (Moorestown): http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/builds/trunk/<version>/{netbook,handset,ivi}/images/<respective directory>/

You can download and use them as a base for the Meego images you create. Modify these .ks files as you wish to create tailored images.

Modifying your .ks

Developers may want to modify the .ks files to create their own custom images. Here are the main options and sections within the .ks file.

You can also find in-depth .ks option information here:http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Kickstart#Chapter_2._Kickstart_Options

Partition, Setup and Bootloader options

Example

lang en_US.UTF-8
keyboard us
timezone --utc America/New_York
auth --useshadow --enablemd5
part / --size 1500 --ondisk sda --fstype=ext3
rootpw meego
xconfig --startxonboot
bootloader --timeout=0 --append="quiet"
desktop --autologinuser=meego  --defaultdesktop=xfce
user --name meego  --groups audio,video --password meego

These are mostly self-explanatory and set up important things such as partition size, filesystem type, kernel paramters, etc. You can change these depending on what your needs are.

Repos

This is where you can specify the yum repositories that you want MIC2 to search and pull your packages from which to make up your image. You can add official Meego repos, other remote repos, or your own local repos on your dev machine.

Example

# This is a comment

# My first repo
repo   --name=trunk  --baseurl=http://mytrunk.myrepo.com

# My second repo
#repo   --name=<repo-name-2>  --baseurl=< url | local-repo-dir >

NOTE: --name of the repo can be any unique alphanumeric name you give your repo, it can be anything. Just make sure you don't use the same name twice for any of the listed repos, remember they have to be unique.

To create a repo you can point to on your local developer machine, you can run the following command:

createrepo -d <local-dir>

Where 'local-dir' is a local directory on your machine that contains the rpms you want include in your local directory.

Adding Packages and Package Groups

Example

%packages

# Example adding pkg groups

@Core
@X for Netbooks
@Base
@Development Tools
@<my-PkgGroup1>
@<my-PkgGroup2>

# Example adding individual pkgs

kernel-netbook
xorg-x11-server-Xorg-setuid
carrick
xorg-x11-drv-evtouch
<my-pkg-1>
<my-pkg-2>
%end

This specifies exactly what packages will be included in your image. Package groups can be specified with a "@" preceding it, as you can see from the examples above. Package groups are defined in the 'repodata' section of a repo, under a 'comps*.xml' file. Defined therein are package group names, and what packages are included in each package group. The Meego package groups are standard, and cannot be changed. You can, however, define your own package groups in your own non-Meego repos if you are using those.

Please see here for more info on defining package groups in repositories: TO-DO-LINK

You can also add individual package names to be included in the image as you can see from the second part in the above example.

Important Note about how MIC2 picks a package when different versions are available

A common problem is that, let's say, a packageA has more than one version residing in a repo(s) that your .ks is pointing to.

How will the MIC2 know which one to pick?

Example

There exists in the repo(s) these different versions of PackageA:

PackageA-1.0

PackageA-2.0

PackageA-3.0

MIC2 will pick the PackageA with the highest version number (PackageA-3.0 in this case).

There is one way to get around that, and that is to set the 'Epoch' version within a package .spec file.

Example (works in both .spec and .yaml file)

Name: <name>
Summary: <summary>
Epoch: 1
Version: <version>

MIC2 will first look to compare the 'Epoch' version of the packages. All Meego official packages do not include an 'Epoch' version, so if you set the 'Epoch' number within your .spec file to any positive integer, no matter if your package version is smaller, MIC2 will choose your package.

So back to our example.

Example

PackageA-1.0 (Epoch not set)

PackageA-2.0 (Epoch = 1)

PackageA-3.0 (Epoch not set)

MIC2 will choose PackageA-2.0 in this case. And it follow that:

Example

PackageA-1.0 (Epoch=100)

PackageA-2.0 (Epoch = 1)

PackageA-3.0 (Epoch not set)

MIC2 will choose PackageA-1.0.

Remember that Meego packages will not have 'Epoch' set, so chances are that if you set 'Epoch' in your own package to any positive integer, it will be the one MIC2 chooses to pull down and include in an image.

Removing Packages

If you would like to make sure that a pkg is _not_ included, you can specify that with a '-' preceding the package name.

Example

%packages

# Example pkg groups

@Core

# Example adding individual pkgs

kernel-netbook

# Example removing individual pkgs

-carrick
-package-xyz

%end

with the above example, packages 'carrick' and 'package-xyz' will _not_ be included in the image.

Note: all packages that depend on the package you want to remove should also be removed, or else MIC2 will ignore your request to remove that package from an image. For example, if 'carrick' depends on 'package-xyz', and you specified only to remove 'package-xyz', and keep carrick, MIC2 will ignore the request to remove package-xyz (since carrick depends on it), and it includes both of these pgks in the image.

Post scripts

You can also specify post-scripts to be run after the image is installed.

Example

%post

# Example - saving some space
rm -f /boot/initrd*
rm -f /core*


# Example - Install working xorg.conf
if [ -f /usr/share/my.conf ]; then
    cp /usr/share/my.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf
fi

# Example - Tell alsa the correct audio card to use for your platform
echo -e "options snd-hda-intel index=0/noptions snd-timbi2s index=1" > /etc/modp
robe.d/alsa.conf


%end

Proxy settings for the repos in .ks

An option you might find useful if you're behind a firewall is the --proxy flag for the "repo" definition. You can specify it in the .ks as follows:

 repo --name=meego --baseurl=http://repo.meego.com/trunk/repo/ia32/os/ --proxy=http://proxyhost:proxyport/ --proxyuser=proxyusername

--proxypaswd=proxyuserpassword

If you are behind a firewall, you don't need to set proxyuser and proxypasswd, like:

 repo --name=meego  --baseurl=http://repo.meego.com/trunk/repo/ia32/os/ --proxy=http://proxyhost:proxyport

Note: You can also insert this in your sudoers config:

 
$ sudo visudo

Add: Defaults env_keep += " no_proxy http_proxy ........." 

so sudo will adhere to the no_proxy and proxy settings.

MIC2 Configuration file

MIC2 options can be specified in a global configuration file (/etc/mic2/mic2.conf) and local configuration file ($HOME/.mic2.conf) where you can specify

• Repository configuration
• proxy settings
• cache directories and
• other variables

that you normally would have to re-type in your command-line.

The two configuration files have the same format, /etc/mic2/mic2.conf is global, no matter whoever is running MIC2, this configuration file will be read first, $HOME/.mic2.conf is just valid for current user, every user can have their own settings. The final configuration is a combination of two configuration files, options in $HOME/.mic2.conf will override those from/etc/mic2/mic2.conf. Options from command line have the highest priority. If an option is specified on the command line, the same option in both configuration files, global and local will be ignored.

Below is an example you can cut-and-paste, and reuse for your needs:

[main]
cachedir=/home/user1/mycache
tmpdir=/home/user1/mystorage/tmp
outdir=/home/user1/mystorage
proxy=http://my.proxy.com:911/
no_proxy=localhost,127.0.0.0/8,.mysite.com,172.16.0.0/16

cachedir = directory where the cached repo(s) will reside. With this variable set, you do not need to pass the --cache flag in the command-line.

tmpdir = temporary directory used by MIC2 when creating images. With this variable set, you do not need to pass the --tmpdir flag in the command-line.

outdir = where your images will reside once they are created. With this variable set, you do not need to pass the --outdir flag in the command-line.

proxy = specify your proxy if you're behind a behind a firewall.

no_proxy = specify what domains should not sure the proxy setting.

image_format = specify image format.

default_ks = specify a default kickstart file, there are several kickstart files provided in repositoryhttp://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/devel/trunk/repo/ia32/os/

Note: When specifying proxy and no_proxy, you do not need to use the --proxy flag in your .ks files when referring to repos.

In configuration files, you also can specify one or multiple repositories, for example:

[trunk]
name=trunk
baseurl=http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/devel/trunk/repo/ia32/os/
enabled=1

Once there is this repository info in your configuration files, and both image_format and default_ks are set, you can just run "sudo mic-image-creator" to create a image, there isn't any extra argument needed.

Use Bootstrap

MIC2 highly depends on yum and librpm, but different Linux distributions used diffrent yum and librpm versions, so MIC2 has some compatibility issues on OpenSUSE, Ubuntu and Debian, bootstrap is just for fixing these compatibility issues.

bootstrap is a minimal MeeGo file system, MIC2 can run very smoothly on it using chroot mode. You can use the below command to create a bootstrap:

sudo mic-create-bootstrap -n trunk -k /your/repo/cache/path -r http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/devel/trunk/repo/ia32/os/ -o /your/final/bootstrap

-n is used to specify repository name, if you have its cache before, it can reduce runtime dramatically to use it with -k option, -k is used to specify your repository cache dir, -r is used to specify MeeGo main repository.

Once you created your bootstrap, you can use this bootstrap to run MIC2 as follows

sudo mic-image-creator --bootstrap=/your/final/bootstrap --format=livecd --config=default.ks --cache=/your/repo/cache/path

Alternatively, you can create and use bootstrap in one mic-image-creator run as follows

sudo mic-image-creator --build-bootstrap --bootstrap=/your/final/bootstrap --format=livecd --config=default.ks --cache=/your/repo/cache/path

Running mic-image-writer

mic-image-writer writes a Meego image to a USB disk as an alternative to dd.

mic-image-writer can run in both console mode and GUI mode. It can decide which mode to run, according to current system environment. You can also use a given option to force it to run in some other mode. Run 'mic-image-writer --help' to get usage information:

Usage: mic-image-writer [options] [image file]

Options:
  -h, --help     Show this help message and exit
  -c, --console  Run in console mode
  -g, --gui      Run in GUI mod

Here is a run example in console mode:

$ sudo mic-image-writer meego-xxx.img
Available usb disk:
        [1] /dev/sdc: SanDisk USB Flash Drive
        [2] /dev/sdb: SanDisk U3 Cruzer Micro
Please choice [1..2] ? 2
Source: /myhome/meego-xxx.img
Target: /dev/sdb
Image size: 559 MB
Estimated time: 55 seconds
Elapsed time: 64, progress: 100% 8944+0 records in
8944+0 records out
586153984 bytes (586 MB) copied, 63.0486 s, 9.3 MB/s

mic-image-writer can estimate how long it will take to write the given image to your USB disk and reports current writing progress. It automatically unmounts your USB disk, if it is mounted. If your USB can't be unmounted, it will terminate.

If you love UI mode, you can run it in X enviroment. The command with the added -g flag:

sudo mic-image-writer -g meego-xxx.img

Image name is optional.

Running mic-image-convertor

It's very easy to use:

sudo mic-image-convertor --source-image=InputImage --target-format=Targegformat

sudo mic-image-convertor -I InputImage -T Targegformat

For example, to translate a KVM raw image to livecd image, just type:

sudo mic-image-convertor --source-image=meego-core-200902200545/meego-core-200902200545-sda.raw --target-format=livecd

A new livecd image of meego-converted-from-raw-200902201804.iso is generated. The tool can detect the type of input image, either raw or vmdk.

This tool is very useful. For example, the developer can launch a virtual machine running MeeGo v2 and make whatever changes on the virtual system like yum install/remove a package, scp a source tarball to VM and build and try, and etc. Then with a simple "sync" or shutdown of VM, the VM image now contains his changes. With this tool, the VM image can be transformed to a live image and burned to a USB flash disk. Now developers can have final verifications in a target device, with changes in the live system.

Running mic-chroot

There are two major usage models for mic-chroot for developers.

chroot directly into the image to use it as a development environment, then optionally create a new image based off of your changes

sudo mic-chroot  -c livecd meego-core-200903131337.iso

The above command would present a chroot, using the livecd image, to developers with some bind mounts like /proc /sys /dev/pts and /parentroot. With those bind mounts, developers now can easily exchange files in chroot env with host /parentroot, and conduct yum install, yum remove and any other network related operations. After done and typing "exit", a new live ISO image is created from the chroot env with the changes developers made.

Unpack and modify the image's filesystem (which you can save), and create a new image based off of your changes

Sometimes developers want to keep the chroot env so that they can do multiple changes in that root file system at different times. So they want to execute following:

sudo mic-chroot -s my-chroot-fs --unpack-only  meego-core-200903131337.iso --bind-mounts=/proc:/proc;/:/parentroot;/sys:/sys;/dev/pts:/dev/pts

The above command creates a folder called 'my-chroot-fs' in the current directory, using the chroot environment from the livecd image. Of course if one forgets to add the --bind-mounts options, you'll need to manually do the bind mounting yourself. Don't forget copying /etc/reslov.conf into my-chroot-fs if you need to use DNS. Should you wish to create an image from the chroot, just execute following to create a livecd image

sudo mic-chroot -c livecd --convert-only my-chroot-fs/

Enabling Autoinstallation

You need to copy a kickstart file into /root/mic2-ks.cfg which is used for automated installation of the image. To activate autoinstall mode, boot with autoinst on the command line or add --menus=autoinst to the bootloader directive in the kickstart file you use to create the image.

Known issues

• MIC2 is not compatible with Ubuntu 8.04 (Yum package compatibility)
• MIC2 is not compatible with the initial Ubuntu 9.04. Make sure you have package libsqlite3-0 of 3.6.10-1ubuntu0.2 or later.
• MIC2 has some issues on Debian, please refer to MIC on Debian to get installation instructions

Troubleshooting

You can file a bug on http://bugzilla.meego.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Development%20Tools (Note: you should select MIC for component) if you run into any MIC2-related issue, bugzilla can track your issue faster and more efficiently.

libgcc related issues

libgcc_s.so.1 must be installed for pthread_cancel to work"

"Error: failed to create image : '/sbin/mksquashfs /var/tmp/imgcreate-FKCSsk/iso-u8xCPh/LiveOS/osmin /var/tmp/imgcreate-FKCSsk/iso-u8xCPh/LiveOS/osmin.img' exited with error (-6)

This error occurs when MIC2 is unable to find the proper version of libgcc. This usually happens on x86_64 systems - MIC2 is looking for the 32 bit version of libgcc, but only the 64 bit version is installed. Installing the 32 bit version of libgcc should resolve this.

General squashfs issues

"Error: failed to create image : '/sbin/mksquashfs /var/tmp/imgcreate-FKCSsk/iso-u8xCPh/LiveOS/osmin /var/tmp/imgcreate-FKCSsk/iso-u8xCPh/LiveOS/osmin.img' exited with error (-6)

This error can also be an issue with the syslinux package. Try updating to the latest version for your distro.

device-mapper issues

unable to remove open device

This is a race condition with device-mapper in Fedora: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=506644. Usually rerunning the MIC2 command will resolve this.

python related issues

    from urlgrabber.grabber import URLGrabber
ImportError: No module named urlgrabber.grabber

Some people are using python they built themselves, so some python modules aren't under their python library path. For such error, only one way is not to use your own python but to use python your system installed.

debian-based distros related issues

On debian-based distros, we used pycentral to package mic2, but mic2 source installtion used distutils, so two kinds of installation have different installation path, if they exist there at the same time, it will result in some unpredictable errors to run mic2. In order to run it correctly, you can only keep just one installation, source or binary.

Remove binary installation

sudo apt-get remove mic2

Remove source installation

Get python lib path

$ python
Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Sep 30 2008, 15:41:38)
[GCC 4.3.2 20080917 (Red Hat 4.3.2-4)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import distutils.sysconfig
>>> print distutils.sysconfig.get_python_lib()
<PYTHONLIBPATH>
>>>
$

Remove mic2 files

$ sudo rm -rf <PYTHONLIBPATH>/mic
$ sudo rm -rf <PYTHONLIBPATH>/mic-0.*
$ sudo rm -f /usr/bin/mic
$ sudo rm -f /usr/bin/mic-*
$ sudo rm -f /usr/bin/moblin-*

Note: You must replace <PYTHONLIBPATH> with the above python lib path

 

ARM related issues

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/mic-image-creator", line 856, in <module>
    ret = main()
  File "/usr/bin/mic-image-creator", line 682, in main
    run_in_bootstrap(options.bootstrap, argv, bindmounts, arch = options.arch)
  File "/usr/bin/mic-image-creator", line 261, in run_in_bootstrap
    ret = subprocess.call(args, preexec_fn = chroot_bootstrap)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/subprocess.py", line 444, in call
    return Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs).wait()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/subprocess.py", line 594, in __init__
    errread, errwrite)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/subprocess.py", line 1149, in _execute_child
    raise child_exception
OSError: [Errno 8] Exec format error

This error occues when trying to build ARM images without passing --arch=armv7l to meego-image-creator.

Proxy cache

See http://bugs.meego.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2343

Some servers (e.g. with squid as a proxy) may cache more aggressively than others, and as a result repomd.xml is invalid (old copy) and references out of date metadata files (primary, comps, filelists, etc). This is because the server is returning a cached/old copy of repomd.xml.

Proxy cache should be disabled in mic and yum.

Advanced Hacking Tips

replace kernel in live image

$sudo mic-image-convertor --source-image=<your-netbook.img> --target-format=livecd --shell

This command will give you a chroot environment of MeeGo, you can follow the below steps to replace the default kernel with a new one.

1). remove the old kernel

# rpm -e kernel-netbook

NOTE: execute the above command in chroot environment.

2). copy new kernel to chroot environment of MeeGo

$sudo cp /path/to/kernel-*.rpm /var/tmp/imgcreate-*/install_root/

NOTE: execute the above command in your host system.

/path/to/kernel-*.rpm is your new kernel to install, /var/tmp/imgcreate-*/install_root/ is the directory where chroot MeeGo mounted on.

3). install the new kernel

# rpm -ivh /kernel-*.rpm
# rm /kernel-*.rpm

NOTE: execute the above command in chroot environment.

After that, you can find out the new kernel in directory /boot/.

4). update contents of isolinux

$sudo cp /var/tmp/imgcreate-*/install_root/boot/initrd-*.img  /var/tmp/imgcreate-*/iso-*/isolinux/initrd0.img
$sudo cp /var/tmp/imgcreate-*/install_root/boot/vmlinuz-*  /var/tmp/imgcreate-*/iso-*/isolinux/vmlinuz0

NOTE: execute the above command in your host system.

5. create an new image

#exit

NOTE: execute the above command in chroot environment.

After following all the above steps, you'll have a new image.

build btrfs image

From version 0.20.1 on, mic2 can support btrfs, you can create btrfs image by change fstype=ext3 in your kickstart file to fstype=btrfs. A successful creation will depend on btrfs-progs (btrfs-tools on debian-based distros, btrfsprogs on openSUSE) and btrfs kernel module in your local system, the known issue is we can't create btrfs image on Fedora 11, the issue is the default btrfs kernel module has some issue which will make kernel panic, so for this case, you must ensure you have a stable & latest kernel and btrfs-progs 0.19 on your system, this needs you to build your kernel by yourself and use it to boot your system.

Btrfs-progs is a prerequisite tool, it includes /sbin/mkfs.btrfs, but its version must match btrfs kernel module, so you must ensure this, mic2 repo http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/tools/repos/ has an issue which will install btrfs-progs 0.19 when you install mic2, this is an repo sync error, so please ensure you have your distro's btrfs-progs after mic2 is installed, if your distro's btrfs-progs version is 0.19, this isn't an issue, otherwise you must remove btrfs-progs installation introduced by mic2 and reinstall your distro's btrfs-progs.

How to build btrfs image on Fedora 11 or lower version?

1. Download kernel-2.6.34 or kernel-2.6.35
2. Configure btrfs as module
3. make; make modules; make install; make modules_install
4. Reboot your system using this built-newly kernel
5. Install btrfs-progs 0.19

Done, you're ready for creating btrfs image.