Beyond Buildroot

Boot the generated images

NFS boot

To achieve NFS-boot, enable tar root filesystem in the Filesystem images menu.

After a complete build, just run the following commands to setup the NFS-root directory:

sudo tar -xavf /path/to/output_dir/rootfs.tar -C /path/to/nfs_root_dir

Remember to add this path to /etc/exports.

Then, you can execute a NFS-boot from your target.

Live CD

To build a live CD image, enable the iso image option in the Filesystem images menu. Note that this option is only available on the x86 and x86-64 architectures, and if you are building your kernel with Buildroot.

You can build a live CD image with either IsoLinux, Grub or Grub 2 as a bootloader, but only Isolinux supports making this image usable both as a live CD and live USB (through the Build hybrid image option).

You can test your live CD image using QEMU:

qemu-system-i386 -cdrom output/images/rootfs.iso9660

Or use it as a hard-drive image if it is a hybrid ISO:

qemu-system-i386 -hda output/images/rootfs.iso9660

It can be easily flashed to a USB drive with dd:

dd if=output/images/rootfs.iso9660 of=/dev/sdb

Chroot

If you want to chroot in a generated image, then there are few thing you should be aware of:

  • you should setup the new root from the tar root filesystem image;

  • either the selected target architecture is compatible with your host machine, or you should use some qemu-* binary and correctly set it within the binfmt properties to be able to run the binaries built for the target on your host machine;

  • Buildroot does not currently provide host-qemu and binfmt correctly built and set for that kind of use.