archiso

archiso is an open source and freely distributed software project, a set of command-line bash scripts that can be used to effortlessly build live bootable CD, DVD or USB images, based on the powerful Arch Linux operating system, in the ISO image format.

The program uses a small and uncomplicated code base, it is actively developed, and helps Arch Linux developers generate the monthly official hybrid ISO images of the controversial operating system.

This project provides a very generic utility, that could potentially be used to generate any other operating system, from rescue systems, to special interest live systems, to install disks, etc. archiso is distributed as small TAR archives containing the bash scripts described above.

Getting started with archiso

To install and use the archiso program, you must run an Arch Linux operating system. Of course, the easiest way to get archiso on your distribution is to install it via the pacman or yaourt package managers, from the main software repositories of Arch.

The latest version can also be downloaded from Softoware or via its official website (see link at the end of the article). To use it, save the archive on your PC, unpack it, open a Terminal app, run the ‘cd’ command to navigate to the location of the extracted archive files (e.g. cd /home/softoware/archiso-20) and execute the ‘make’ command to compile the program.

Command-line options

After installation, view the program’s command-line options by running the ‘mkarchiso --help’ command in the terminal emulator. From that output, you will learn that you can specify the packages to install, a custom configuration file for pacman, set label, published and application name for the ISO image, set an installation directory the working directory, and the output directory.

Available commands include ‘init’ to make a base layout and install the base group, ‘install’ to install all the specified packages, ‘run’ to run a specific command, ‘prepare’ to built all images, ‘checksum’ to generate an MD5 file for the ISO image, ‘pkglist’ to make a text file with a list of packages installed on the root image, as well as ‘iso’ to build the ISO image from the working dir.