Where should I start to customize distro for Beaglebone?

[alpery]

Hi everybody,

I am interested with embedding programming. Thus, I bougt a Beaglebone board a years ago. A couple of weeks ago, I tried Arch Linux ARM for Beaglebone. It runs perfectly. By the way, installation guide for Beaglebone is very complete and clear. Then I installed new softwares (ex. Samba) using package manager and configure them.

Now I want to create an SD Card image similar to http://archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM ... est.tar.gz But I want to include packages that I installed later like Samba. This new image file should include chosen softwares and configurations by default. How can i customize the Arch Linux ARM distro for Beaglebone? I am using a Linux distro (Ubuntu) but I have no experience with building kernel etc. Could you suggest a way to do this? I browse github repository of Arch Linux ARM. However I didn't even understand how to compile distro without modifiying it.

Could you offer some suggestions?

Thanks!

Alper

[WarheadsSE]

It is as simple as installing the packages into the image, leaving the configurations as basic, or unconfigured, and then removing the ssh keys for the server, and making sure the passwords are not change from the defaults.

Fairly simple.

[alpery]

Thank you for quick reply.

Could you suggest documents or tutorials about that topic? Which keywords should i use for searching?

Thanks.

Alper

[WarheadsSE]

Download the base image, boot, update, install, clear cache, remove ssh server keys, make new image file.

[alpery]

I understand the concept. After I finalize my configuration on my Beaglebone board, I will learn how to create an image of currently running system. I understand from your comments that creating an image file of running system isn't so hard.

Thanks.
Alper

[WarheadsSE]

You could simply make a meta-package, or image it offline from another system. You could also do a loop-mount, but it would not be a running system, and would need to be an image manged from an ARM device.