this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
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I like my Linux installs heavily customized and security hardened, to the extent that copying over /home won't cut it, but not so much that it breaks when updating Debian. Whenever someone mentions reinstalling Linux, I am instinctively nervous thinking about the work it would take for me to get from a vanilla install to my current configuration.

It started a couple of years ago, when dreading the work of configuring Debian to my taste on a new laptop, I decided to instead just shrink my existing install to match the new laptop's drive and dd it over. I later made a VM from my install, stripped out personal files and obvious junk, and condensed it to a 30 GB raw disk image, which I then deployed on the rest of my machines.

That was still a bit too janky, so once my configuration and installed packages stabilized, I bit the bullet, spun up a new VM, and painstakingly replicated my configuration from a fresh copy of Debian. I finished with a 24 GB raw disk image, which I can now deploy as a "fresh" yet pre-configured install, whether to prepare new machines, make new VMs, fix broken installs, or just because I want to.

All that needs to be done after dd'ing the image to a new disk is:

  • Some machines: boot grubx64.efi/shimx64.efi from Ventoy and "bless" the new install with grub-install and update-grub
  • Reencrypt LUKS root partition with new password
  • Configure user and GRUB passwords
  • Set hostname
  • Install updates and drivers as needed
  • Configure for high DPI if needed

I'm interested to hear if any of you have a similar workflow or any feedback on mine.

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[–] Unmapped@lemmy.ml 35 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You should check out Nixos. You make a config file that you can just copy over to as many machines as you want.

[–] 4am@lemm.ee 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That or Ansible, if you will have a machine to deploy from

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago

You don't need a machine to deploy from. You just need a git repo and Ansible pull. It will pulldown and run playbooks against the host. (Use the self target to run it on the local machine)

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Use configuration tooling such as Ansible.

You also could build a image builder to build your system. You could utilize things like docker and or Ansible to repeatedly get to the same result.

[–] darius@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago

I have the exact same workflow except I have two images: one for legacy/MBR and another for EFI/GPT -- once I read your post I was glad to see I'm not alone haha!

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 months ago

I did the same, exactly the way you did but my "zygote" isnt as advanced.

I should make a raw ISO too, but currently I just use Clonezilla (which shrinks and resizes automatically) and have a small SSD with a nearly vanilla system.

Just because the Fedora ISO didnt boot

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You might be able to script something with Debootstrap. I tested Bcachefs on a spare device once and couldn't get through the standard Debian install process, so I ended up using a live image to Debootstrap the drive. You should be able to give a list of packages to install and copy over configs to the partition.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago

Ansible and docker would work nicely for this

[–] ezekielmudd@reddthat.com 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I believe that Proxmox does this because I have installed/created containers from their available images. I wonder how they create those container images?

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago

There are many way to make a image

[–] 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 months ago

This is designed for Gentoo but I've used it for Ubuntu before: https://github.com/TheChymera/mkstage4/