CustomPiOS

A Raspberry Pi and other ARM devices distribution builder. CustomPiOS is opens an already existing image, modifies it and repackages the image ready to ship.

This repository contains the source script to generate a distribution out of an existing Raspbian distro image, or Armbian devices.

Where to get it?

Clone this repo for now, we are still new. Then follow instructions.

How to use it?

1. Clone this image git clone https://github.com/guysoft/CustomPiOS.git
2. Run src/make_custom_pi_os -g <distro folder> in the repo, distro folder should not exist and contain no spaces. This will both create a folder to build a new distro from, and also download the latest raspbian lite image. The initial distro has a module that has the name of your distro, and you can find it under <distro folder>/src/modules/<distro name> (there should be only one module in the modules folder).
3. cd to <distro folder>/src
4. Edit your <distro folder>/src/config, you can also edit the starting module, which is named as your distro at modules/<dstro name>. More on that in the Developing section.
5. Run <distro folder>/src/build_dist to build an image. If this failes use the method discribed in the vagrant build the section (which makes sure sfdisk and other things work right).

Features

• Modules - write one module and use if for multiple distros
• Write only the code you need for your distro - no need to maintain complicated stuff like building kernels unless its actually want to do it
• Standard modules give extra functionality out of the box
• Supports over 40 embedded devices using Armbian and Raspbian.

Developing

Requirements

1. qemu-arm-static
2. Downloaded Raspbian image.
3. root privileges for chroot
4. Bash
5. git
6. realpath
7. sudo (the script itself calls it, running as root without sudo won't work)
8. Python 3.2+

Known to work building configurations

1. Linux (Ubuntu / Debian etc)
2. OS X - See this tread for information

Modules

One of the main features in CustomPiOS is writing modules. A module is a structured piece of code that adds a function to a distro.

Setting Modules

To set what the distro does, you can add and remove modules. The modules are defined in the MODULES variable set in your distro <distro folder>/src/config file. Modules can be nested, the enables you to provide namespaces or run cleanup functions after other module have run. For example MODULES=base(network(octopi, picamera)), in this example base will start first, and end last, network will start second and end one before last, octopi will start third and end first.

Writing Modules

• Module are places in folders whose names are small letters and with hyphens.
• The can be placed either in CustomPiOS/src/modules or <distro folder>/src/modules.

See the example module in the example disro.

Modules are made from 3 parts:

• start_chroot_script / end_chroot_script
• filesystem folder
• config file

List of Standard library modules

• base - This is the base module you must have in your distro. It sets what image is selected and critical things in the distro
• disable-services - Disables systemd services to start up right after installing them. If your module is installing something, say lighttpd. You should wrap your module with this one. Eg disable-services(lighttpd).
• ffmpeg - Module builds and installs latest ffmpeg from git
• gui - Lets you add a gui that will start on boot, autologin and GPU out of the box.
• kernel - Builds and installs a custom kernel. Warning: building a kernel can take as long as 6 hours. And with two it takes 12 hours. If you are building them a lot its recommended to create a base image and build on top of that. See RealtimePi for usage example.
• network - This module is enabled by default, it creates a file in /boot/${DIST_NAME}-network.txt and /boot/${DIST_NAME}-wpa-supplicant.txt that lets you set up the wifi configuration from a text file that is accessable even from a windows machine.
• raspicam - Enables the pi camera by default

chroot_script

This is where the stuff you want to execute inside the distro is written.

In start_chroot_script write the main code, you can use end_chroot_script to write cleanup functions, that are run at the end of the module namespace.

Useful commands from common.sh

CustomPiOS comes with a script common.sh that has useful functions you can use inside your chroot_script. To use it you can add to your script source /common.sh.

unpack [from_filesystem] [destination] [owner] - Lets you unpack files from the filesystem folder to a given destination. [owner] lets you set which user is going to be the owner. eg. unpack /filesystem/home/pi /home/pi pi

gitclone <MODULE_NAME>_<REPO_NAME>_REPO destination - Lets you clone a git repo, and have the settings preset in the config file. Example usage in OCTOPI module.

In chroot_script:

gitclone OCTOPI_OCTOPRINT_REPO OctoPrint

In config:

[ -n "$OCTOPI_OCTOPRINT_REPO_SHIP" ] || OCTOPI_OCTOPRINT_REPO_SHIP=https://github.com/foosel/OctoPrint.git

filesystem

Lets you add files to your distro, and save them to the repo. The files can be unpacked using the unpack command that is in common.sh.

config

This is where you can create module-specific settings. They can then be overwritten in a distro or variant. The naming convention is the module name in

Build a Distro From within Raspbian / Debian / Ubuntu / CustomPiOS Distros

CustomPiOS distros can be built from Debian, Ubuntu, Raspbian, or even within a distro itself (for other systems use the Vagrant build option). Build requires about 2.5 GB of free space available, depending on what you install. You can build it by issuing the following commands:

sudo apt-get install gawk util-linux realpath qemu-user-static git

git clone https://github.com/guysoft/CustomPiOS.git
cd CustomPiOS/src
./make_custom_pi_os -g /path/to/new_distro
cd /path/to/new_distro/src
sudo modprobe loop
sudo bash -x ./build_dist

Building Distro Variants

CustomPiOS supports building variants, which are builds with changes from the main release build. An example and other variants are available in the folder src/variants/example.

To build a variant use:

sudo bash -x ./build_dist [Variant]

Building Using Vagrant

There is a vagrant machine configuration to let build a CustomPiOS distro in case your build environment behaves differently. Unless you do extra configuration, vagrant must run as root to have nfs folder sync working.

Make sure you have a version of vagrant later than 1.9!

If you are using older versions of Ubuntu/Debian and not using apt-get from the download page.

To use it:

sudo apt-get install vagrant nfs-kernel-server virtualbox
sudo vagrant plugin install vagrant-nfs_guest
sudo modprobe nfs
cd <distro folder>/src/vagrant
sudo vagrant up

After provisioning the machine, its also possible to run a nightly build which updates from devel using:

cd <distro folder>//src/vagrant
run_vagrant_build.sh

To build a variant on the machine simply run:

cd <distro folder>/src/vagrant
run_vagrant_build.sh [Variant]

Usage

1. If needed, override existing config settings by creating a new file src/config.local. You can override all settings found in src/config. If you need to override the path to the Raspbian image to use for building yoru dstro, override the path to be used in BASE_ZIP_IMG, which is part of the base module. By default the most recent file matching *-raspbian.zip found in src/image will be used.
2. Run src/build as root.
3. The final image will be created at the src/workspace

List of Distributions using CustomPiOS

• OctoPi - The ready-to-go Raspberry Pi image with OctoPrint
• FullPageOS - A raspberrypi distro to display a full page browser on boot
• ElectricSheepPi - A Raspberry Pi distribution to run Electric Sheep digital art
• AlarmPi - A Raspberry Pi distribution that turns a raspberrypi to an IOT telegram-controlled alarm clock
• RealtimePi - An out-of-the-box raspebrrypi/raspbian distro with a realtime kernel

Code contribution would be appreciated!