# Running livecd-rootfs builds locally

`livecd-rootfs` is notoriously known to be... difficult?
One question that often comes back is "how do I run that locally?".
Brace yourself, here is a short guide to help you through this.

## Where to run?

While you could do that directly on your host machine, likely your development
laptop, that would mean installing all the needed dependencies, and running
livecd-rootfs as root (because of some `mount` steps, `chroot`, etc...).
Not ideal.
What you more likely want, and is documented here, is to run that in a LXD VM
instead.

## Prerequisites

You need to have LXD installed and configured: https://canonical.com/lxd/install
A clone of this repository, that will be used directly in the VM so that
you can iterate and test changes easily before submitting them:
```
git clone https://git.launchpad.net/livecd-rootfs
```

## Build images

All the magic is done by the `./live-build/build-livefs-lxd` script. It will
basically perform the following actions for you:
  * Launch (or re-start) a LXD VM on the `series` you're targetting.
  * Install in there `livecd-rootfs` from the archive, to make sure all
    dependencies are here and ready to use.
  * Mount the `livecd-rootfs` sources in `/srv/livecd-rootfs`.
  * Run `./live-build/build-livefs` with all the additional arguments you give.
    That's what will build the ISO for you, take a lot of time, and bring your
    machine down.

Depending on what you want to work on, the iteration time can be quite long.
Fortunately `livecd-rootfs` provides many different projects to work with,
providing various experiences in terms of load, space, bandwidth and running
time.

Very fast and lightweight "fake" ISO:
```
❯ ./live-build/build-livefs-lxd --suite resolute --arch amd64 --project ubuntu-test-iso
```

Ubuntu Desktop, the main flagship, and probably most complex ISO:
```
❯ ./live-build/build-livefs-lxd --suite resolute --arch amd64 --project ubuntu
```

Ubuntu Server Live, lighter ISO:
```
❯ ./live-build/build-livefs-lxd --suite resolute --arch amd64 --project ubuntu-server --subproject live
```

Xubuntu Minimal, lighter desktop ISO:
```
❯ ./live-build/build-livefs-lxd --suite resolute --arch amd64 --project xubuntu --subproject minimal
```

## Fetching the image

Obviously, the image has been built inside the LXD VM, so you then need to extract it. Examples:
```
❯ lxc file pull livefs-builder-resolute/root/livecd.ubuntu-test-iso.iso my_ubuntu-test-iso.iso
❯ lxc file pull livefs-builder-resolute/root/livecd.ubuntu.iso my_ubuntu.iso
❯ lxc file pull livefs-builder-resolute/root/livecd.ubuntu-server.iso my_ubuntu-server.iso
❯ lxc file pull livefs-builder-resolute/root/livecd.xubuntu.iso my_xubuntu.iso
```

The fetched ISO should normally boot and work just fine. For example with QEMU:
```
❯ kvm -m 3G -smp 2 -cdrom ./my_xubuntu.iso
```

## Clean up

This will leave you with a running VM eating some precious 8GB from your host.
You can stop and/or delete that VM with these:
```
❯ lxc stop livefs-builder-resolute
❯ lxc delete livefs-builder-resolute
```

## Speeding things up with `apt-cacher-ng`

All the previous steps work just fine, but when iterating, it's often very
useful to cache all the package downloads, which can speed things up a lot,
particularly if you don't live in one of Canonical's datacenters.

Basically, on your host:
```
❯ sudo apt install apt-cacher-ng
❯ cat ~/.config/livecd-rootfs/build-livefs.conf
[defaults]
mirror =  http://192.168.0.42:3142/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
```

`~/.config/livecd-rootfs/build-livefs.conf` is indeed stored on your host, but
will be copied automatically at the right place if it exists.

There, `192.168.0.42` is your local network IP, reachable from the LXD VM, on
which `apt-cacher-ng` is listening.
Other `apt` caching solutions might be working, but are untested.

