linuxkit/README.md

Moby

Moby, a toolkit for custom Linux distributions

Getting Started

Build

Simple build instructions: use make to build. This will build the Moby customisation tool and a Moby initrd image.

Requirements:

• GNU make
• GNU or BSD tar (not Busybox tar)
• Docker

Booting and Testing

• make qemu will boot up a sample Moby in qemu in a container
• on OSX: make hyperkit will boot up Moby in hyperkit, and also download hyperkit and vpnkit binaries for later use
• make test or make hyperkit-test will run the test suite

Customise

To customise, copy or modify the moby.yaml to your own file.yaml and then run ./bin/moby file.yaml to generate its specified output. You can run the output with ./scripts/qemu.sh or ./scripts/hyperkit.sh.

Yaml Specification

The Yaml format is loosely based on Docker Compose:

• kernel specifies a kernel Docker image, containing a kernel and a filesystem tarball, eg containing modules. mobylinux/kernel is built from kernel/
• init is the base init process Docker image, which is unpacked as the base system, containing init, containerd, runc and a few tools. Built from base/init/
• system are the system containers, executed sequentially in order. They should terminate quickly when done.
• daemon is the system daemons, which normally run for the whole time
• files are additional files to add to the image
• outputs are descriptions of what to build, such as ISOs.

For the images, you can specify the configuration much like Compose, with some changes, eg capabilities must be specified in full, rather than add and drop, and there are no volumes only binds.

The config is liable to be changed, eg there are missing features (specification of kernel command line, more options etc).