Penguins-eggs can turn your system into an installable ISO
Posted by sudo_nick@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 17 comments
Disclaimer: Not my project - just think it's extremely cool and it has not received the attention it deserves.
Penguins-eggs allows you to easily create a live- and installable version of your current system, much like remastersys in the old days. It's like equipping your machine with a reproductive system.
Features:
- Produces an installable ISO extremely fast.
- Optional customizable GUI installer (calamares) or a minimal CLI installer for the new machine.
- Can delete itself from the new machine after installation.
- Customizable promotional material, like icons and installer slides.
If you like linux-mint, check out my linux mint respin which was made with penguins-eggs. Thanks, Piero!
THOD_ANAST@reddit
my first attempt went pretty well for an iso of 8.4GB size which is being installed seamlessly. But i need to further tweak /skel folder on next attempts. It looks really promising, i have been using clonezilla lately though it is not hardware agnostic cloning sector by sector the disk layout. In general it requires plenty of time for trial and error in addition to further tweaking. Great work, congatulations to the developers.
Historical_Award_177@reddit
Descobri os Ovos de pinguim recentemente, e já consegui gerar a primeira live do meu sistema (Manjaro), sem o diretório home. Mas não consigo configurar o tema yaru-dark para ser o default da iso. Como fazer?
Relevant-Ear1351@reddit
If I update a software package, will Penguins Eggs record the change by default?
Pistache-plum@reddit
How to use pingus' eggs and create an ISO with STP
Dagusiu@reddit
This is really cool. I can imagine this could be really useful for organizations, where instead of maintaining an ever growing setup script, you could instead just make one system work as intended, build that as an .iso and keep using that.
NorthStarTX@reddit
It seems like it, but that concept has existed since the late 90s in norton ghost, disk cloning hardware etc, or even over the network with syslinux+pxe. The problem is, it makes an exact clone of the machine, including certificates, config files and so on. That’s why, on AWS where you could just do the same thing with a custom AMI, you still need userdata to differentiate the machine from all the others. You don’t want every device to be identically named, IP’d, and configured with the same identity in whatever fleet management software you use (as an example) so you have to give it a way to differentiate itself. That takes a lot out of that setup script for sure, but it doesn’t eliminate it.
Fine_Classroom@reddit
Yes, but in many instances and use cases - like home use, nobody cares. It's useful that you mentioned this, regardless.
Artisan61@reddit
I have always thought about organizations and especially schools. Currently I am trying to bring fully unattended installation via PXE directly from the iso or from an installed system, the idea precisely is to use it for installations in public schools.
PhysicalRaspberry565@reddit
Even if it's way later now: another idea may be FAI: https://fai-project.org/
It's much more difficult to configure and I'm not sure, if it supports non Debian bases systems (now), but it can be used to add software or updates, too, not only complete installs. I used it some time in university
ManlySyrup@reddit
I'd love to try your Mint respin but it's based on the years-old 20.3 version and using the old Kernel 5.15 so it won't even boot on my computer. Have you considered upgrading to 21.1 and Kernel 6.2?
sudo_nick@reddit (OP)
I definitely will at some point when I'm less busy with uni. If you like the look, you can test out the theme and/or icon-pack - which are available in separate repositories - on your own 21.1 system :)
ManlySyrup@reddit
Noice :)
If Penguins' Eggs is not too difficult to use then I might release my own spin of Mint too!
sudo_nick@reddit (OP)
Looks awesome. Would love to try it out
XenoMorphPT@reddit
On Manjaro I get this:
yay penguins-eggsaur/penguins-eggs 9.3.10-1 (+3 0.03) A terminal utility which allows you to remaster your system and redistribute it as an ISO image, on a USB stick or through the network via PXE remote bootCould not find all required packages: mkinitcpio-archiso (Wanted by: penguins-eggs)Is it safe to install mkinitcpio-archiso? Or could it mess my current installation?
Artisan61@reddit
Probably the error come becouse we, to have an universal package, included:
# Check OS
if [[ $(grep 'Manjaro' /etc/lsb-release) ]]; then
depends+=('manjaro-tools-iso')
else
depends+=('mkinitcpio-archiso')
fi
building is not a problem, with yay yes!
Artisan61@reddit
You must use v9.4.2, I uploaded it yesterday on AUR
Probably yay toomorrow will give that option.
Artisan61@reddit
I have just released version 9.4.2 of penguins-eggs also working for Arch Linux and derivatives: manjaro and rebornos at the moment, but with the right collaborations you could outside compatibility a lot.
You can find the PKGBUILD for Arch Linux at https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/penguins-eggs.
This [article](https://penguins-eggs.net/book/arch-naked.html) on my blog describes how to create a live-named naked-exclusively CLI and therefore very lightweight, how to install it, and finally how to customize it with a GUI and development tools.
This is my workstation, although I generally use it in a Debian bullseye version.