pmbootstrap

Sophisticated chroot/build/flash tool to develop and install postmarketOS.

Development

Find the location of the upstream repository for pmbootstrap on the postmarketOS homepage.

Run CI scripts locally with:

pmbootstrap ci

Run a single test file:

pytest -vv ./test/test_keys.py

Issues

Issues are being tracked in the GitLab issue tracker.

Requirements

• Linux distribution on the host system (x86, x86_64, aarch64 or armv7)
  • Windows subsystem for Linux (WSL) does not work! Please use VirtualBox instead.
  • Linux kernel 3.17 or higher
  • Note: kernel versions between 5.8.8 and 6.0 might have issues with parted.
• Python 3.10+
• For python3 < 3.11: tomli
• OpenSSL
• git
• kpartx (from multipath-tools)
• losetup (with --json support, e.g. util-linux version)
• ps
• tar

Relation to pmaports

For pmbootstrap to be useful, it needs to maintain a local copy of the pmaports repository where postmarketOS-specific packages are maintained. This is set up automatically, but the local copy of pmaports does not automatically get updated. To update it, you can run $ pmbootstrap pull.

The latest pmbootstrap version works with currently active postmarketOS releases. Attempting to use pmboostrap with old postmarketOS versions (old pmaports branches) may result in failures and is not supported. See pmbootstrap_min_version in pmaports.cfg for the oldest supported pmbootstrap version for a given pmaports revision. The upper bound is not documented.

Usage Examples

Please refer to the postmarketOS wiki for in-depth coverage of topics such as porting to a new device or installation. The help output (pmbootstrap -h) has detailed usage instructions for every command. Read on for some generic examples of what can be done with pmbootstrap.

Installing pmbootstrap

https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Installing_pmbootstrap

Basics

Initial setup:

pmbootstrap init

Run this in a second window to see all shell commands that get executed:

pmbootstrap log

Quick health check and config overview:

pmbootstrap status

Packages

Build aports/main/hello-world:

pmbootstrap build hello-world

Cross-compile to armhf:

pmbootstrap build --arch=armhf hello-world

Build with source code from local folder:

pmbootstrap build linux-postmarketos-mainline --src=~/code/linux

Update checksums:

pmbootstrap checksum hello-world

Generate a template for a new package:

pmbootstrap newapkbuild "https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/tinydm/-/archive/1.2.0/tinydm-1.2.0.tar.gz"

Default architecture

Packages will be compiled for the architecture of the device running pmbootstrap by default. For example, if your x86_64 PC runs pmbootstrap, it would build a package for x86_64 with this command:

pmbootstrap build hello-world

If you would rather build for the target device selected in pmbootstrap init by default, then use the build_default_device_arch option:

pmbootstrap config build_default_device_arch True

If your target device is pine64-pinephone for example, pmbootstrap will now build this package for aarch64:

pmbootstrap build hello-world

Chroots

Enter the armhf building chroot:

pmbootstrap chroot -b armhf

Run a command inside a chroot:

pmbootstrap chroot -- echo test

Safely delete all chroots:

pmbootstrap zap

Device Porting Assistance

Analyze Android boot.img files (also works with recovery OS images like TWRP):

pmbootstrap bootimg_analyze ~/Downloads/twrp-3.2.1-0-fp2.img

Check kernel configs:

pmbootstrap kconfig check

Edit a kernel config:

pmbootstrap kconfig edit --arch=armhf postmarketos-mainline

Root File System

Build the rootfs:

pmbootstrap install

Build the rootfs with full disk encryption:

pmbootstrap install --fde

Update existing installation on SD card:

pmbootstrap install --disk=/dev/mmcblk0 --rsync

Run the image in QEMU:

pmbootstrap qemu --image-size=1G

Flash to the device:

pmbootstrap flasher flash_kernel
pmbootstrap flasher flash_rootfs --partition=userdata

Export the rootfs, kernel, initramfs, boot.img etc.:

pmbootstrap export

Extract the initramfs

pmbootstrap initfs extract

Build and flash Android recovery zip:

pmbootstrap install --android-recovery-zip
pmbootstrap flasher --method=adb sideload

Repository Maintenance

List pmaports that don't have a binary package:

pmbootstrap repo_missing --arch=armhf --overview

Increase the pkgrel for each aport where the binary package has outdated dependencies (e.g. after soname bumps):

pmbootstrap pkgrel_bump --auto

Generate cross-compiler aports based on the latest version from Alpine's aports:

pmbootstrap aportgen gcc-armhf

Manually rebuild package index:

pmbootstrap index

Delete local binary packages without existing aport of same version:

pmbootstrap zap -m

Debugging

Use -v on any action to get verbose logging:

pmbootstrap -v build hello-world

Parse a single APKBUILD and return it as JSON:

pmbootstrap apkbuild_parse hello-world

Parse a package from an APKINDEX and return it as JSON:

pmbootstrap apkindex_parse $WORK/cache_apk_x86_64/APKINDEX.8b865e19.tar.gz hello-world

ccache statistics:

pmbootstrap stats --arch=armhf

Use alternative sudo

See PMB_SUDO in docs/environment_variables.md.

Select SSH keys to include and make authorized in new images

If the config file option ssh_keys is set to True (it defaults to False), then all files matching the glob ~/.ssh/*.pub will be placed in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys in the user's home directory in newly-built images.

Sometimes, for example if you have a large number of SSH keys, you may wish to select a different set of public keys to include in an image. To do this, set the ssh_key_glob configuration parameter in the pmbootstrap config file to a string containing a glob that is to match the file or files you wish to include.

For example, a ~/.config/pmbootstrap_v3.cfg may contain:

[pmbootstrap]
# ...
ssh_keys = True
ssh_key_glob = ~/.ssh/postmarketos-dev.pub
# ...

License

GPLv3