penguins-distrobuilder

penguins-distrobuilder

Unified project combining lxc/distrobuilder and itoffshore/distrobuilder-menu into a single repository, integrated with penguins-eggs.

Layout

penguins-distrobuilder/
├── distrobuilder/   # lxc/distrobuilder — Go, system container & VM image builder
├── menu/            # itoffshore/distrobuilder-menu — Python TUI frontend
├── integration/     # penguins-eggs hook and recovery plugin
│   ├── eggs-plugin/
│   └── recovery-plugin/
├── Makefile         # top-level targets: build, install, run-menu, clean
└── README.md

Components

distrobuilder (Go)

System container and VM image builder for Incus and LXC. Builds rootfs images from YAML template definitions.

Command	Purpose
distrobuilder build-dir	Build plain rootfs
distrobuilder build-incus	Build Incus image from scratch
distrobuilder build-lxc	Build LXC image from scratch
distrobuilder pack-incus	Create Incus image from existing rootfs
distrobuilder pack-lxc	Create LXC image from existing rootfs
distrobuilder repack-windows	Repack Windows ISO with drivers

Source: distrobuilder/ — upstream: https://github.com/lxc/distrobuilder

distrobuilder-menu (Python)

Console TUI frontend for distrobuilder. Menu-driven LXD/LXC image building with template management, cloud-init config, custom template generation, and automatic template updates via the GitHub REST API.

Command	Purpose
dbmenu	Build LXD container/VM image (default)
dbmenu --lxc	Build LXC container image
dbmenu -o	Create new template override
dbmenu -g	Generate custom template from override
dbmenu -i	Create/edit cloud-init configuration
dbmenu -u	Force update templates
dbmenu -v	Show version / update to latest release
dbmenu -r	Regenerate custom templates

Config: ~/.config/dbmenu.yaml (auto-generated on first run)

Source: menu/ — upstream: https://github.com/itoffshore/distrobuilder-menu

Quick start

# Build distrobuilder from source
make build

# Install distrobuilder binary + dbmenu
make install

# Launch the TUI menu (LXD mode)
make run-menu

# Launch the TUI menu (LXC mode)
make run-menu-lxc

penguins-eggs integration

The integration/eggs-plugin/ hook is called by eggs produce to optionally build a distrobuilder image of the produced system alongside the standard ISO. The integration/recovery-plugin/ hook snapshots the current container state before a factory reset.

See integration/ for details.

Dependencies

• distrobuilder: Go 1.21+, squashfs-tools, debootstrap or equivalent
• distrobuilder-menu: Python 3.10+, pyyaml, urllib3, yq (Go version 4+), incus or lxd

Upstream licenses

• distrobuilder/ — Apache-2.0 (lxc/distrobuilder)
• menu/ — GPL-3.0 (itoffshore/distrobuilder-menu)