Provided by: supermin_5.1.14-2ubuntu1.1_amd64 
NAME
supermin - Tool for creating and building supermin appliances
SYNOPSIS
supermin --prepare -o OUTPUTDIR PACKAGE [PACKAGE ...]
supermin --build -o OUTPUTDIR -f chroot|ext2 INPUT [INPUT ...]
DESCRIPTION
Supermin is a tool for building supermin appliances. These are tiny appliances (similar to virtual
machines), usually around 100KB in size, which get fully instantiated on-the-fly in a fraction of a
second when you need to boot one of them.
This program used to be called febootstrap. This manual page documents supermin 5.x which is a complete
rewrite and quite different from febootstrap 2.x. If you are looking for the febootstrap 2.x tools, then
this is not the right place.
BASIC OPERATION
The supermin tool can be used in two modes, preparing a tiny supermin appliance, which is done on a build
system. And building, which takes the supermin appliance and constructs a full, bootable appliance,
which is done on the end user's system.
Supermin does not need to be run as root, and generally should not be run as root. It does not affect
the host system or the packages installed on the host system.
PREPARE MODE
--prepare creates the tiny supermin appliance in the given output directory. You give it a list of
packages that you want installed, and supermin will automatically find the dependencies. The list of
packages has to be installed on the host machine.
For example:
supermin --prepare bash coreutils -o supermin.d
creates a supermin appliance containing the packages "bash" and "coreutils". Specifically, it creates
some files in directory supermin.d. This directory is the supermin appliance. (See "SUPERMIN
APPLIANCES" below).
It is intended that the --prepare step is done on a central build machine, and the supermin appliance is
distributed to end users (which is easy because supermin appliances are so small).
BUILD MODE
--build (previously a separate program called "supermin-helper") builds the full appliance from the
supermin appliance:
supermin --build --format ext2 supermin.d -o appliance.d
This will create files called appliance.d/kernel, appliance.d/root etc, which is the full sized bootable
appliance.
It is intended that the --build step is done on the end user's machine at the last second before the
appliance is needed. The packages in the supermin appliance (those specified when the supermin appliance
was prepared) must be installed on the end user's machine.
Build and cache
Typically you want to rebuild the appliance on the end user machine only on demand. Supermin has some
extra options to make this easy:
supermin --build \
--if-newer --lock /run/user/`id -u`/supermin.lock \
--format ext2 supermin.d -o appliance.d
If multiple programs run this command in parallel, the instances will wait on the lock file. The full
appliance only gets rebuilt if it doesn't exist or if it is older than the input files and host package
database.
Note that the lock file must not be stored inside the -o directory.
PACKAGES
By "package" we mean the RPM, Debian, (etc.) package, eg. "coreutils", "perl".
In all cases supermin can only build a supermin appliance which is identical in distro, version and
architecture to the host. It does not do cross-builds.
OPTIONS
--help
Display brief command line usage, and exit.
--build
Build the full appliance from the supermin appliance. This used to be a separate program called
"supermin-helper".
--copy-kernel
(--build mode only)
Copy the kernel (and device tree, if created) instead of symlinking to the kernel in /boot.
This is fractionally slower, but is necessary if you want to change the permissions or SELinux label
on the kernel or device tree.
--dtb WILDCARD
(--build mode only)
If specified, search for a device tree which is compatible with the selected kernel and the name of
which matches the given wildcard. You can use a wildcard such as "vexpress-*a9*.dtb" which would
match vexpress-v2p-ca9.dtb.
Notes:
• You may need to quote the wildcard to prevent it from being expanded by your shell.
• If no --dtb option is given, no device tree will be looked for.
• You only need a device tree on architectures such as ARM and PowerPC which use them. On other
architectures, don't use this option.
• If you use this option and no compatible device tree can be found, supermin will exit with an
error.
-f FORMAT
--format FORMAT
(--build mode only)
Select the output format for the full appliance.
There is no default. When using --build you must specify the --format option.
Possible formats are:
chroot
A directory tree in the host filesystem.
The filesystem tree is written to OUTPUTDIR (ie. the -o option).
This is called a "chroot" because you could literally chroot(1) into this directory afterwards,
although it's a better idea to use a container technology (LXC, etc.).
No kernel, initrd or dtb is generated in this mode because it is assumed that you will be running
the appliance using the host kernel.
ext2
An ext2 filesystem disk image.
The output kernel is written to OUTPUTDIR/kernel, the device tree (if using) to OUTPUTDIR/dtb, a
small initramfs which can mount the appliance to OUTPUTDIR/initrd, and the ext2 filesystem image
to OUTPUTDIR/root. (Where OUTPUTDIR is specified by the -o option).
The filesystem (OUTPUTDIR/root) has a default size of 4 GB (see also the --size option).
--host-cpu CPU
(--build mode only)
Specify the host CPU (eg. "i686", "x86_64"). This is used as a substring match when searching for
compatible kernels. If not specified, it defaults to the host CPU that supermin was compiled on.
--if-newer
(--build mode only)
The output directory is checked and it is not rebuilt unless it needs to be.
This is done by consulting the dates of the host package database (/var/lib/rpm etc), the input
supermin files, and the output directory. The operation is only carried out if either the host
package database or the input supermin files are newer than the output directory.
See also --lock below.
"--include-packagelist
(--build mode only)
Add a /packagelist file inside the generated chroot or ext2 filesystem, containing a sorted list of
all the packages used to build the appliance.
Mostly useful for debugging, as it makes it easier to find out e.g. which version of a package was
copied in the appliance.
--list-drivers
List the package manager drivers compiled into supermin, and whether the corresponding package
manager is detected on the current system.
--lock LOCKFILE
(--build mode only)
If multiple parallel runs of supermin need to build a full appliance, then you can use the --lock
option to ensure they do not stomp on each other.
The lock file is used to provide mutual exclusion so only one instance of supermin will run at a
time.
Note that the lock file must not be stored inside the output directory.
-o OUTPUTDIR
Select the output directory.
When using --prepare, this is the directory where the supermin appliance will be written. When using
--build, this is the directory where the full appliance, kernel etc will be written.
Any previous contents of the output directory are deleted, and a new output directory is created.
The output directory is created (nearly) atomically by constructing a temporary directory called
something like OUTPUTDIR.abc543, then renaming the old output directory (if present) and deleting it,
and then renaming the temporary directory to OUTPUTDIR. By combining this option with --lock you can
ensure that multiple parallel runs of supermin do not conflict with each other.
--packager-config CONFIGFILE
(--prepare mode only)
Set the configuration file for the package manager. This allows you to specify alternate software
repositories.
For ArchLinux, this sets the pacman configuration file (default /etc/pacman.conf). See
pacman.conf(5).
For Yum/RPM distributions, this sets the yum configuration file (default /etc/yum.conf). See
yum.conf(5).
--prepare
Prepare the supermin appliance.
--use-installed
(--prepare mode only)
If packages are already installed, use the contents (from the local filesystem) instead of
downloading them.
Note that this can cause malformed appliances if local files have been changed from what was
originally in the package. This is particularly a problem for configuration files.
However this option is useful in some controlled situations: for example when using supermin inside a
freshly installed chroot, or if you have no network access during the build.
--size SIZE
(--build mode only)
Select the size of the output ext2 filesystem, where the size can be specified using common names
such as "32G" (32 gigabytes) etc.
If the size is not specified, a default size of 4 GB is used.
To specify size in bytes, the number must be followed by the lowercase letter b, eg:
"--size 10737418240b".
-v
--verbose
Enable verbose messages.
You can give this option multiple times to enable even more messages:
-v Debugging of overall stages.
-v -v
Detailed information within each stage.
-v -v -v
Massive amounts of debugging (far too much for normal use, but good if you are trying to diagnose
a bug in supermin).
-V
--version
Print the package name and version number, and exit.
SUPERMIN APPLIANCES
Supermin appliances consist of just enough information to be able to build an appliance containing the
same operating system (Linux version, distro, release etc) as the host OS. Since the host and appliance
share many common files such as /bin/bash and /lib/libc.so there is no reason to ship these files in the
appliance. They can simply be read from the host on demand when the appliance is launched. Therefore to
save space we just store the names of the packages we want from the host, and copy those in (plus
dependencies) at build time.
There are some files which cannot just be copied from the host in this way. These include configuration
files which the host admin might have edited. So along with the list of host files, we also store a
skeleton base image which contains these files and the outline directory structure.
Therefore the supermin appliance normally consists of at least two control files (packages and
base.tar.gz).
packages
The list of packages to be copied from the host. Dependencies are resolved automatically.
The file is plain text, one package name per line.
base.tar
base.tar.gz
This tar file (which may be compressed) contains the skeleton filesystem. Mostly it contains
directories and a few configuration files.
All paths in the tar file should be relative to the root directory of the appliance.
hostfiles
Any other files that are to be copied from the host. This is a plain text file with one pathname per
line.
Paths can contain wildcards, which are expanded when the appliance is created, eg:
/etc/yum.repos.d/*.repo
would copy all of the *.repo files into the appliance.
Each pathname in the file should start with a "/" character.
Supermin itself does not create hostfiles (although before version 5, this was the main mechanism
used to create the full appliance). However you may drop one or more of these files into the
supermin appliance directory if you want to copy random unpackaged files into the full appliance.
excludefiles
A list of filenames, directory names, or wildcards prefixed by "-" which are excluded from the final
appliance.
This is rather brutal since it just removes things, potentially breaking packages. However it can be
used as a convenient way to minimize the size of the final appliance.
Supermin itself does not create excludefiles. However you may drop one of more of these files into
the supermin appliance directory to stop packaged files from being copied into the full appliance.
Note that the names above are just suggestions. You can use any names you want, as supermin detects the
contents of each file when it reconstructs the appliance. You can also have multiple of each type of
file.
RECONSTRUCTING THE APPLIANCE
The separate mode "supermin --build" is used to reconstruct an appliance from the supermin appliance
files.
This program in fact iterates recursively over the files and directories passed to it. A common layout
could look like this:
supermin.d/
supermin.d/base.tar.gz
supermin.d/extra.tar.gz
supermin.d/packages
supermin.d/zz-hostfiles
In this way extra files can be added to the appliance just by creating another tar file (extra.tar.gz in
the example above) and dropping it into the directory, and additional host files can be added (zz-
hostfiles in the example above). When the appliance is constructed, the extra files will appear in the
appliance.
MINIMIZING THE SUPERMIN APPLIANCE
You may want to "minimize" the supermin appliance in order to save time and space when it is
instantiated. Typically you might want to remove documentation, info files, man pages and locales.
You can do this by creating an excludefiles that lists files, directories or wildcards that you don't
want to include. They are skipped when the full appliance is built.
-/boot/*
-/lib/modules/*
-/usr/share/doc/*
-/usr/share/info/*
-/usr/share/man/*
Be careful what you remove because files may be necessary for correct operation of the appliance.
KERNEL AND KERNEL MODULES
Usually the kernel and kernel modules are not included in the supermin appliance.
When the full appliance is built, the kernel modules from the host are copied in, and it is booted using
the host kernel.
USING A CUSTOM KERNEL AND KERNEL MODULES
Supermin is able to choose the best host kernel available to boot the appliance. However you can
override this by setting environment variables (see "ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES" below).
If you build a custom kernel (eg. by compiling Linux from source), then you should do something like
this:
mkdir /tmp/kmods
make bzImage
make modules
make modules_install INSTALL_MOD_PATH=/tmp/kmods
export SUPERMIN_KERNEL=/path/to/linux.git/arch/x86/boot/bzImage
export SUPERMIN_MODULES=/tmp/kmods/lib/modules/3.xx.yy
supermin --build -f ext2 [etc]
ENFORCING AVAILABILITY OF PACKAGES
Supermin builds the appliance by copying in the packages listed in packages. For this to work those
packages must be available. We usually enforce this by adding requirements (eg. RPM "Requires:" lines)
on the package that uses the supermin appliance, so that package cannot be installed without pulling in
the dependent packages and thus making sure the packages are installed for supermin to use.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
SUPERMIN_KERNEL
If this environment variable is set, then automatic selection of the kernel is bypassed and this
kernel is used.
The environment variable should point to a kernel file, eg. /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.x86_64
SUPERMIN_MODULES
This specifies the kernel modules directory to use.
The environment variable should point to a module directory, eg. /lib/modules/3.0.x86_64/
SUPERMIN_DTB
Force the given device tree file to be used.
SUPERMIN_KERNEL_VERSION
On non-x86 architectures, you may need to set this environment variable if supermin cannot determine
the kernel version of "SUPERMIN_KERNEL" just by looking at the file.
SEE ALSO
<http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/supermin/>, guestfs(3), <http://libguestfs.org/>.
AUTHORS
• Richard W.M. Jones <http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/>
• Matthew Booth
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2009-2014 Red Hat Inc.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU
General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even
the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write
to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.