User:Immolo/Low Memory LiveCD

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Gentoo LiveCDs need around 160MB of RAM nowadays to run which is a problem for old devices which have very little RAM, however we can easily solve this by creating one that doesn't use SquashFS at the cost of speed and drive wear.

Build Environment Setup

Install dev-util/catalyst making sure the iso useflag is set

root #emerge --ask dev-utils/catalyst

Create a directory to work in:

root #mkdir -p /var/tmp/catalyst/build/default
root #mkdir /var/tmp/catalyst/config/iso-qemu
root #cd /var/tmp/catalyst

Spec Files Setup

Note
In this example a PPC32 Musl LiveCD will be created using a x86_64 host so change those parts to match the system you are building for.

A stage3 from the Gentoo Mirrors matching the target LiveCD system is required, so in this example we will be using the stage3-ppc-musl-hardened-openrc-latest.tar.xz.

root #cd /var/tmp/cataylst/build/default
root #wget <Gentoo Mirror>/stage3-ppc-hardened-musl-openrc.tar.xz
root #cd /var/tmp/catalyst