Pendrive for disk image infusions

If we have an image and we need to provision it on hardware box many times, we do an autoloader.

See this post for now.

TL;DR;

Create a pendrive image disk.img:

./create-all.sh
./build-tools.sh
./add-overlay.sh

Place an image for infusion (Tails for example) in the exFAT partition of the disk.img:

hdiutil attach disk.img
pushd /Volumes/PFDII_DATA
wget https://download.tails.net/tails/stable/tails-amd64-6.0/tails-amd64-6.0.img
popd
hdiutil detach /dev/disk7  # replace /dev/disk7 with your output from `hdiutil attach disk.img`

Create a target disk target.img, big enough to fit the infusion image:

qemu-img create target.img 6G

And run the virtual machine (check your sound is on):

qemu-system-x86_64 -m 128M \
    -drive file=disk.img,format=raw,index=0,media=disk \
    -boot c \
    -drive file=target.img,if=none,id=nvm \
    -device nvme,serial=deadbeef,drive=nvm \
    -display curses \
    -audiodev coreaudio,id=audio0 -machine pcspk-audiodev=audio0

Configuring

Can be done using env file in /Volumes/PFDII_DATA/ with these options, for example:

DELAY=0
LOG_TO_FILE="yes"
WITH_SOUND="no"
WAIT_FOR_PENDRIVE_REMOVAL=no
ON_COMPLETE=poweroff # or reboot (default is poweroff)
TARGET_DEVICE="/dev/nvme0n1"
DD_FLAGS="bs=4M conv=fsync" # "bs=4M conv=fsync" are default
LZ4_FLAGS="-v"

Post-dd script

Place a post-dd.sh in /Volumes/PFDII_DATA/ with custom code that will be executed after dd is completed.

Lz4-compressed images

Lz4-compressed images *.img.lz4 are automatically decompressed and dd-ed. They should save space for sparce images with empty space.

To compress the *.img call:

lz4 -c golden.img > /Volumes/PFDII_PAYLOAD/golden.img.lz4

Logging to TCP

When copying image for infusion, run locally:

nc -k -l 8866

And use ngrok to forward port from the Internet:

ngrok tcp 8866

You should see a line like:

Forwarding                    tcp://5.tcp.eu.ngrok.io:19442 -> localhost:8866

Write 5.tcp.eu.ngrok.io:19442 into /Volumes/PFDII_DATA/log-to-tcp:

cat > /Volumes/PFDII_DATA/log-to-tcp <<EOF
5.tcp.eu.ngrok.io:19442
EOF

This way, you'll see the output of pfdii at work, like:

Logging stderr and stdout to tcp 5.tcp.eu.ngrok.io:19442 ....
Connected at 2024-03-04T01:49:06+00:00
Image for infusion: tails-amd64-6.0.img
Waiting for 5 seconds before infusion...
Infusing...
339+1 records in
339+1 records out
1425014784 bytes (1.3GB) copied, 9.820562 seconds, 138.4MB/s
real	0m 9.89s
user	0m 0.05s
sys	0m 5.94s
Done
Remove pendrive to reboot...
Or ctrl-c to stop the script and enter shell...

Real USB

Prepare disk.img first, then attach usb and check it's device name with:

diskutil list

Partition a real usb device:

diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk7 1 GPT  ExFAT "PFDII_DATA" 0b

Copy ESP partition from disk.img to usb:

./update-esp-on-pendrive.sh /dev/disk7s1