Provided by: debvm_0.2.8_all 
NAME
debvm-create - Create a VM image for various Debian releases and architectures
SYNOPSIS
debvm-create [-a architecture] [-h hostname] [-k sshkey] [-o output] [-r release] [-s
<task>] [-z size] [-- mmdebstrap options]
DESCRIPTION
debvm-create is essentially a thin wrapper around mmdebstrap for creating a raw ext4
filesystem image for booting with debvm-run. The purpose of these images primarily is
testing the different releases and architectures without access to a physical machine of
that architecture. Beyond essential packages, the image will contain apt, an init system
and a suitable kernel package. Notably absent is a bootloader and a partition table. In
order to boot such an image, one is supposed to extract the kernel and initrd from the
image and pass it to a suitable bootloader. No user account is created and root can login
without specifying a password.
OPTIONS
-a architecture, --architecture=architecture
Specify a Debian architecture name. By default, the native architecture is being
used. A suitable kernel image is automatically selected and installed into the
image.
-h hostname, --hostname=hostname
Set the hostname of the virtual machine. By default, the hostname is testvm.
-k sshkey, --sshkey=sshkey
Install the given ssh public key file into the virtual machine image for the root
user. This option also causes the ssh server to be installed. By default, no key
or server is installed. To connect to the vm, pass a port number to debvm-run
with the -s option.
-o output, --output=output
Specify the file name of the resulting virtual machine image. By default, it is
written to rootfs.ext4.
-r release, --release=release
Use the given Debian release. By default, unstable is being used.
-s task, --skip=task
Skip a particular task or feature. The option may be specified multiple times or
list multiple tasks to be skipped by separating them with a comma. By default, no
tasks are skipped. The following tasks may be skipped.
autologin
Skips adding a the customize-autologin.sh to mmdebstrap that configures
automatic root login on a serial console and also parses the "TERM" kernel
cmdline and passes it as "TERM" to agetty.
ext4
Internally, mmdebstrap creates a tar archive first and converts that to ext2,
which is then upgraded to ext4. This option causes the conversion to ext2 and
further steps to be skipped and the output image will be a tar archive
instead. Such a tar archive is not suitable for being booted by debvm-run.
initsystem
skips installing an init system. When enabling this option, the resulting
image will lack /sbin/init and the image will not be bootable by debvm-run
unless something else provides that path. One would specify this option when
providing the init system via other means, such as passing
"--include=sysvinit-core" to mmdebstrap. This option also implies disabling
other integrations that depend on it. At present, this will also skip
autologin and systemdnetwork.
kernel
skips installing a linux kernel image. This can be useful to install a kernel
without a package. If a kernel is installed via mmdebstrap option
"--include", automtatic kernel installation is automatically skipped.
packagelists
reduces the package lists inside the image. The available database for dpkg
is not created. The package lists used by apt are deleted. This generally
produces a smaller image, but you need to run apt update before installing
packages and dpkg --set-selections does not work.
systemdnetwork
skips installing libnss-resolve as well as automatic network configuration via
systemd-networkd.
usrmerge
By default debvm adds a hook to enable merged-/usr without the usrmerge
package given a sufficiently recent Debian release. Without the hook,
dependencies will pull the usrmerge package as needed, which may result in a
larger installation.
-z size, --size=size
Specify the minimum image size as an integer and optional unit (example: 10K is
10*1024). Units are K,M,G,T,P,E,Z,Y (powers of 1024) or KB,MB,... (powers of
1000). The resulting image will be grown as a sparse file to this size if
necessary. The default is 1 GB.
-- mmdebstrap options
All options beyond a double dash are passed to mmdebstrap after the suite and
target specification. This can be used to provide additional hooks for image
customization. You can also request additional packages to be installed into the
image using mmdebstrap's --include option. Any positional arguments passed here
will be treated as mirror specifications by mmdebstrap.
EXAMPLES
In order to create images for Debian ports architectures, you can pass two options to
mmdebstrap:
debvm-create ... -- http://deb.debian.org/debian-ports --keyring=/usr/share/keyrings/debian-ports-archive-keyring.gpg
SEE ALSO
debvm-run(1) mmdebstrap(1)