arkdep/README.md

Arkanium

A toolkit for building, deploying and maintaining a btrfs-based multi-root system.

Packaging

Custom configurations

Arch Linux-based

arkanium-build.d
├── customlinux			# Directory carrying a custom name
|  ├── overlay			# (Optional) Root filesystem overlay directory, contents are copied to root
|  ├── base.list		# Plain text file containing list of packages installed by pacstrap
|  ├── package.list		# (Optional) Plain text file containing list of packages installed by pacman
|  ├── systemd.services		# (Optional) Plain text file containing list of systemd services to enable
|  ├── type         		# Plain text file, for configs of the Arch type should contain `archlinux`

Building an image

Use the arkanium-build script to build your customlinux images.

sudo arkanium-build customlinux

# Or alternatively using a custom image name
sudo ARKANIUM_OVERWRITE_RANDOM='customlinux_v1.0' arkanium-build customlinux

Once done you can find compressed and uncompressed copies of your new image in the target directory.

Arkanium will by default generate a psuedo-random hex string and use this as the name of your image. This behaviour can be overwritten by assigning a custom name to the ARKANIUM_OVERWRITE_RANDOM environment variable.

Repository

Example repository layout

This would be a suitable layout if repo_url in /arkanium/config is set to https://repo.example.com/arkanium.

repo.example.com
├── arkanium
|  ├── list		                # Plain text file containing names of all available image types
|  ├── customlinux
|  |  ├── database		        # Plain text file containing : delimited lists of all available images `image_name:compression_method:sha1sum`
|  |  ├── customlinux_v1.0.tar.zst	# Compressed disk images
|  |  ├── customlinux_v2.0.tar.zst	# Compressed disk images

Example repository configuration

The list file is in part optional, it not utilized during the deployment process but the user may use it in combination with the arkanium-deploy list command to request a list of all available images in the repository.

customlinux
customlinux-gnome
customlinux-kde

The database file contains a : delimited list of all available images. Each line contains the following information image_name:compression_method:sha1sum.

customlinux_v2.0:zst:d5f45b2dac77399b37231c6ec4e864d184d35cf1
customlinux_v1.0:zst:80ba4c7f3ff7a0ebce8e67d5b73f87c56af1b9f3

The image name is used to find the actual image, users can also manually refer to a version with arkanium-deploy deploy customlinux customlinux_v1.0

The compression method is flexible, any compression method tar can ifner is supported. Some examples being xz, gz and zst.

The sha1sum is used to ensure the file was downloaded properly.

Arkanium will assume the top most entry in the database is the latest one, when no image version is defined or latest is requested it will grab the top most entry.

Usage

Rolling out Arkanium on a new system

Note

Are you lazy? Is arkanium-deploy a physical and mental struggle to type? I recommend symlinking or script wrapping it as arkdep

Note

Arkanium has as of now only been tested on Arch Linux-based systems

Arkanium can be easily rolled out and torn down again, it is non-invasive by design. So it should be safe to just toy around with it on your system.

System requirements;

• / is partitioned with btrfs
• /boot mounted boot partition
• Systemd-boot bootloader is installed and configured as the primary bootloader
• dracut, wget and curl are installed

The following command will initialize Arkanium, it will deploy a subvolume containing all Arkanium related files excluding kernels and initramfs to /arkanium.

sudo arkanium-deploy init

Deploying an image

To deploy the latest available image from the default repository run the following command;

sudo arkanium-deploy deploy

It will check in with the server defined in /arkanium/config as repo_url and pull the latest image defined in $repo_url/database, see Repository for additional information.

Deploying a specified image version

A specific image version to pull and deploy can be parsed like so;

sudo arkanium-deploy deploy 00ce35074659538f946be77d9efaefc37725335689

Simply provide the basename of the image and it will attempt to find it in /database.

You do not have to provide the full basename, you can provide it with an impartial basename, the first hit will be pulled and deployed.

sudo arkanium-deploy deploy 00ce