NAME

       debvm-create - Create a VM image for various Debian releases and architectures

SYNOPSIS

       debvm-create [-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

       -h hostname, --hostname=hostname
               Set the hostname of the virtual machine.  By default, the hostname is testvm.

       --initsystem=systemd | busybox | finit | runit | sysv | none
               Select an init system to be used.  The default is systemd independently of the
               Debian release.  Note that when selecting none, the resulting image will not be
               bootable unless something else takes care of creating /sbin/init.  Automatic
               customizations that are specific to a particular init system will be skipped when
               a different init system is selected.  When using the finit init system consider
               passing --include=finit-plugins to mmdebstrap.

       -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.  If you pass a
               complete sources.list that includes release names to mmdebstrap, you may pass an
               empty string here.

       -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.  This is specific to using finit,
                   runit, systemd or sysv as init system.

               ext4
                   Normally, mmdebstrap bootstraps to a temporary directory and we create the
                   output ext4 image from that directory.  This option causes the creation of the
                   ext4 image to be skipped and the output file becomes a tar archive of the
                   temporary directory instead.  Such a tar archive is not suitable for being
                   booted by debvm-run.

               ifupdown
                   skips installing ifupdown configuration to automatically configure wired
                   interfaces.  This is specific to using finit, runit or sysv as init system.

               initsystem
                   skips installing an init system.  This is equivalent to specifying
                   --initsystem=none.

               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.  This is specific to using systemd as init system.

               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 (powers of 1024).  The resulting image will be grown
               as a sparse file to this size if necessary.  The default is 2 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.  In particular, you can
               also change the architecture of the resulting image using the --architecture
               option.

EXAMPLES

       When creating an image with multiple architectures, the kernel selection will prefer the
       sibling 64bit architecture.

           debvm-create ... -- --architecture=armhf,arm64

       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

       You can also install a graphical desktop environment.

           debvm-create ... -- --hook-dir=/usr/share/mmdebstrap/hooks/useradd --aptopt='Apt::Install-Recommends "true"' --include=linux-image-generic,task-gnome-desktop

       Here the hook creates a password-less user "user".  In order for "task-gnome-desktop" to
       work reasonably well, "Recommends" should be enabled.  By default a "-cloud" kernel that
       lacks graphics drivers is installed.

       Installing Ubuntu is also supported somewhat.

           debvm-create --release kinetic -- --keyring=/usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg --components=main,universe --include=e2fsprogs

       Note that "universe" must be enabled as the "merged-usr" and "systemdnetwork" hooks rely
       packages from that component.  "e2fsprogs" should be pulled by "initramfs-tools".

       There also is an aid for sharing a directory with the VM.

           debvm-create ... -- --include=linux-image-generic --hook-dir=/usr/share/mmdebstrap/hooks/9pmount
           debvm-run ... -- -virtfs local,security_model=none,path=/host_path,mount_tag=guest_tag

       This will mount the directory "/host_path" from the host as "/media/guest_tag" in the VM
       during boot using 9P.  Note that the "-cloud" kernel lacks the 9P filesystem driver.

SEE ALSO

           debvm-run(1) mmdebstrap(1)