Hey everyone. So I need to make a custom iso because I don’t have access to the router from my apartment and my wifi antenna uses the rtl8192eu driver, which is not included by default. Hence, I decided a custom iso was the way to go. I don’t want however to bloat it up, and since I’m making it on my laptop which is running Endeavour OS I can’t trust the packages.x86_64 file in the releng directory to be the default plain arch install package list (following the archiso instructions on the wiki).

So what I am actually asking for: Before building my iso, what are the packages that the actual maintainers of Arch Linux would put in the packages.x86_64 file, which we would have access to from the live environment, that I should also include (plus the 5 packages I want to make sure I have, which is the custom part of this iso)?

How I understand it reading the install guide as well as a couple forum posts, the only truly necessary packages for an arch installation are base, linux, and linux-firmware. Correct me if I’m wrong please. After installing archiso on my endeavour os laptop I had around 130 packages in my packages.x86_64 file. Many seemed unnecessary.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: Some screenshots which will hopefully help

  • @mectx02
    1•1 year ago

    If you look up the package on the ArchWiki repository, there’s a Gitlab page where you can find the file that is used to make the releng ISO: relevant packages.x86_64 file. There’s a similar file in that repository for the minimum number of packages for install if you want to trim down your number of installed packages.

    What you can then do is set up a local repository for the setup pacman.conf (the one in your working project directory) and include your driver as a precompiled pacman package. This page on the ArchWiki shows how to set that up, but if you want the gist of it,

    • Navigate to a folder where you want the local repository
    • Execute repo-add [repository name] [list of packages to add, separated by space]
    • Add local repository to setup pacman.conf

    You can do something similar such that the drivers will be installable from the iso itself - just place your repository somewhere inside the airootfs/etc/ directory and modify etc/pacman.conf.

    • promitheasOP
      1•1 year ago

      There’s a similar file in that repository for the minimum number of packages

      I only see the packages.x86_64 file in the releng directory (the link you provided). Is the minimal file you’re talking about in there or is it in another directory under the configs one?

      Thanks!

      • @mectx02
        2•1 year ago

        The baseline (minimal iso packages list) is under another directory in configs, but it’s in the same repository.

        Relevant link for easier finding.

  • @[email protected]
    1•1 year ago

    Nothing wrong with building your own iso, but you can also simply put the required packages on the original install stick (unless you just dd the iso, then you need another) and then install the drivers once booted.

    base is not a package but a meta package for the 28 chosen bare metal neccessities. Those packages have dependencies of their own. So it will never be just 3 packages.

    If you find something you do not need, remove it.

    • promitheasOP
      1•1 year ago

      I would need dkms installed to add the drivers no? But without an internet connection, there would be no way to get dkms other than a physical ethernet cable, which I don’t have

      • @ge_generation
        1•1 year ago

        I think you should be able to load the drivers within the live usb environment with lsmod without the need for dkms? You can install dkms at time of install and setup so that it adds the driver when you update the system after install, but at time of install you should be able to just load the drivers after copying to the usb as @voluntaryexilecat suggested

        • promitheasOP
          1•1 year ago

          Thanks! I think I got the iso working, but if not Ill give that a go