rinse8

Usage

Options

--arch Specify the architecture to install. Valid choices are 'amd64', 'i386' or 'arm64' only.

--add-pkg-list Add a list of additional packages.

--cache Specify whether to cache packages (1) or not (0).

--cache-dir Specify the directory we should use for the cache.

--clean-cache Remove all cached .rpm files.

--directory Specify the directory into which the distribution should be installed.

--distribution Specify the distribution to be installed.

--help Show help information.

--mirror Specify the URL of the mirror. Normally this is read from /etc/rinse/rinse.conf.

--list-distributions Show the distributions which are installable.

--manual Read the manual for this script.

--print-uris Only show the files we would download, don't actually do so.

--verbose Enable verbose output.

--version Show the version number and exit.

Overview

  rinse is a simple script which is designed to be able to install
 a minimal working installation of an RPM-based distribution into
 a directory.
  The tool is analogous to the standard Debian GNU/Linux debootstrap
 utility.

Usage

  To use this script you will need to be root.  This is required
 to mount /proc, run chroot, and more.
  Basic usage is as simple as:

   rinse --distribution alma-9 --arch amd64 --directory /tmp/test

  This will download the required RPM files and unpack them into
 a minimal installation of Fedora Core 6.
  To see which RPM files would be downloaded, without actually
 performing an installation or downloading anything, then you
 may run the following:

   rinse --distribution fedora-core-6 --print-uris

Todo

  Short of supporting more distributions or architectures there aren't
 really any outstanding issues.

Adding new distributions

To add a new distribution you need to

1. Add a new package list to "etc/DISTRIBUTION.packages"

2. Add a script to "scripts/DISTRIBUTION/post-install.sh"
Many of these are identical across releases, so symlinks work here.

3. Add download mirrors to "etc/rinse.conf"

Package lists tend to be very similar across different releases in a distro, but not identical. A way to make these lists is to obtain an existing install of a distro, and follow the dependency tree of the packaging utilities. A "DISTRIBUTION.packages" file can be the output of

   dnf repoquery --requires --resolve --recursive --installed dnf | \
     perl -pe 's/(.*)-.*?-.*?$/$1/g' | \
     sort -u | egrep -v 'glibc-all-langpacks|glibc-langpack-'

This is more a developers attempt to generate a package list.