How to build custom Linux image

Distrobuilder
1

Hi guys. I want to build custom Gentoo image, one based on hardened+nomultilib stage, and another one based on hardened+nomultilib+selinux stage. I’m going to setup own binary package server on Gentoo in the LXD container for my server.

I have following questions:

  1. Is it a good idea to run SELinux inside container or is it a better idea to use virtual machine?
  2. Is it possible to tell distrobuilder to download hardened+nomultilib stage instead of normal one?
  3. What do you think about manually setting up chroot and packing LXD image using distrobuilder?
  4. Is LXD compatible with SELinux? I’m not sure if I can use SELinux on production server using LXD as a container technology.
2

You might take a look at the example template here: lxc-ci/gentoo.yaml at master · lxc/lxc-ci · GitHub

As mentioned here: GitHub - lxc/distrobuilder: System container image builder for LXC and LXD

3

I tried to look at the example config but I literally have no idea how to force gentoo-http downloader to download stage3-amd64-hardened-nomultilib-openrc-20210822T170550Z.tar.xz image instead of stage3-amd64-20210630T214504Z.tar.xz.

$ sudo distrobuilder build-lxd gentoo.yaml                                                                                                                             
^Cmp/gentoo--amd64/stage3-amd64-20210630T214504Z.tar.xz: 4% (2.65MB/s)
4

:thinking: Interesting.

According to distrobuilder/scheme.yaml at master · lxc/distrobuilder · GitHub it should be possible to specify more about the used image.

But in the gentoo.yaml it just states:

image:
  distribution: gentoo

Maybe try to modify that.

Otherwise it might also be possible to switch to the desired version inside the distro itself.
For example by setting the right repos (/etc/portage/repos.conf - Gentoo Wiki) and installing the right packages.

5

Just looked at the source code: distrobuilder/gentoo.go at master · lxc/distrobuilder · GitHub

@stgraber @monstermunchkin Do I read correctly that the regular stage3 image is hardcoded?

So it only varies according to architecture.

@kjh1004 would like to use a different image: current-stage3-amd64-hardened-nomultilib-openrc/

6

That would need a change to the source plugin to allow for that to be configurable.

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7

Once this PR is merged, you can use source.variant for whatever you want, not just systemd.

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