Digitalocean gold image for Archlinux

Apr 5, 2019

 projects  Archlinux

A gold image tool for Archlinx and Digitalocean.

I made script that can build a img file for use with digitalocean. Now you can run Archlinux on digital ocean with ease.

You can find this script on github (https://github.com/robsonde/digitalocean_builder)

Or you can just grab the image file from https://www.asinine.nz/files/arch_image.img.gz

From the README.txt

Archlinux Custom Image builder for Digitalocean

This tool will allow you to easily make an Archlinux custom image for use with DigitalOcean.

Why:

A few years ago DigitalOcean supported Archlinux as a standard image. When they dropped official support, people started using a conversion script that could convert a Debian system to an Archlinux system. As of late 2018 DigitalOcean now supports custom images, making a custom image is a process that takes time to get right.

What’s in the image:

This is a very limited image, you can add packages at the top of the script.

  • haveged is installed and enabled by default.
  • sshd is installed and enabled by default.
  • base-devel is installed, you may not need this.
  • git is installed, this is needed for the digitalocean synchronize AUR package
  • wget, I am not sure this is strictly needed.
  • gptfdisk, used for the disk resize magic.
  • parted, used for disk resize magic.
  • digitalocean-synchronize AUR package to automatically setup network
  • DNS is setup for google’s DNS on 8.8.8.8
  • All pacman mirrors are enabled by default.

At first boot a few things happen:

  • A resize the image to take up the full size of the disk.
  • Unique SSH host keys
  • Unique machine-id

How to use:

Run the script as root and give it a file name for your image.

# curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robsonde/digitalocean_builder/master/make_image.sh
# chmod u+x make_image.sh
# ./make_image.sh foo.img

This will create a foo.img and a compressed foo.img.gz

Or just get the latest image from https://www.asinine.nz/files/arch_image.img.gz

Then in the DigitalOcean console upload a custom image, you can even import via URL and have DigitalOcean pull directly from https://www.asinine.nz/files/arch_image.img.gz

NOTE: The image created from this tool needs you to use SSH keys to access the server for the first time.

Bugs:

Yes, lots I expect. This has had limited testing, feel free to report bugs or feature requests to < robsonde at gmail >