Building a Custom Arch Linux Live ISO in the Cloud

Arch Linux has a number of packages that may not be available in other distributions, in particular Ink/Stitch. It can be helpful to be able to run such a program on another computer which may not have it installed. A live iso can help one do this. Building a bootable live ISO image on the cloud can be convenient as it can be automated and allow saving on bytes needed to download build dependencies to a local computer. The following steps enable building on AWS using an Arch Linux image.

Log into the instance

ssh -i sshkey  arch@ip.address

After logging in, first repopulate the keys and update the system

sudo pacman -Scc
sudo rm -rf /etc/pacman.d/gnupg
sudo pacman-key --init
sudo pacman-key --populate
sudo pacman -Syu

Next install archuseriso

sudo pacman --needed -Sy git arch-install-scripts bash dosfstools e2fsprogs \
  erofs-utils grub libarchive libisoburn make mtools parted squashfs-tools syslinux
git clone https://github.com/laurent85v/archuseriso.git
sudo make -C archuseriso install

Inkstitch is available in Aur, but not in the main Arch repositories. To add it to the live iso image, first create a local repository with a locally built Ink/Stitch package.

sudo pacman --noconfirm -S base-devel inkscape
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/inkstitch.git
cd inkstitch
makepkg --install
cd ..
mkdir inkstitchdb
cd inkstitchdb
repo-add inkstitch.db.tar.zst ../inkstitch/*.pkg.tar.zst
cd ..
cp inkstitch/*.zst inkstitchdb/

Create a profile for the image using the lxqt image as the starting point

cd archuseriso
cd profiles
cp -r lxqt inkstitch
cd inkstitch
echo inkscape >> packages.x86_64
echo inkstitch >> packages.x86_64
sed -i 's/\#\[custom\]/\[inkstitch\]/g' pacman.conf
sed -i 's/\#SigLevel = Optional TrustAll/SigLevel = Optional TrustAll/g' \
pacman.conf
sed -i 's|\#Server = file:///home/custompkgs|Server = file:///home/arch/inkstitchdb|g' \
pacman.conf
sed -i 's|iso_name="aui-lxqt"|iso_name="aui-lxqt-inkstitch"|g' \
profiledef.sh
cd ../../..

Build the live iso image

sudo aui-mkiso archuseriso/profiles/inkstitch/

Once done, the resulting iso should be available at

/home/arch/out/aui-lxqt-linux_6_15_6-0711-x64.iso

References

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Install_Arch_Linux_on_a_removable_medium
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archiso
https://mags.zone/help/arch-usb.html
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Tips_and_tricks#Custom_local_repository

Available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license