Overview

SystemRescue+ZFS is a fork of the SystemRescue distribution (based on Arch Linux) with the following improvements:

• ZFS supported out of the box
• Serial console enabled for all boot options, including Memtest86+
• EFI boot progress indicators for the kernel/initramfs/system stages
• ISO image below 1 GiB in size

Serial console

A serial terminal is enabled out of the box on ttyS0/COM1 at 115,200 baud. If these settings are unsuitable, adjust the configuration of the appropriate bootloader and the kernel, then build a new image.

Bootloader

GRUB (EFI boot)	SYSLINUX (legacy boot)
📍 efiboot/grub/grubsrcd.cfg serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 …	📍 syslinux/sysresccd_head.cfg SERIAL 0 115200

Kernel

📍 build.sh
consoles='console=ttyS0,115200 …'

Building

$ sudo ./build.sh [-d] [-v]

• -d: Use fast compression, significantly speeding up development builds.
• -v: Print more information while building (strongly recommended).

Dependencies

Arch Linux with the following packages installed:

• arch-install-scripts
• archiso from the custom SystemRescue repository ⚠️
• base-devel
• edk2-shell
• grub
• hugo
• isomd5sum
• mtools

Rebuilds

The state of successful build steps is persisted in work/build.make_* files. If such a file exists for a given build step, build.sh skips that step indefinitely. State files must be manually deleted for any steps that one wants reexecuted.

Full rebuild

$ sudo rm work/build.make_*

Partial rebuild

Delete the state file for the desired step and any downstream steps. For example, if you have customized the GRUB configuration, you must remove build.make_efi and its successors build.make_efiboot and build.make_iso.

Steps

1. make_pacman_conf
2. make_basefs
3. make_documentation
4. make_packages
5. make_customize_airootfs
6. make_setup_mkinitcpio
7. make_boot
8. make_boot_extra
9. make_syslinux
10. make_isolinux
11. make_efi
12. make_efiboot
13. make_prepare
14. make_imageinfo
15. make_iso