The last few days i am working with febootstrap.
febootstrap is a tool to build a tiny linux appliance based on your system.
To build an appliance, febootstrap downloads every package it needs from the internet, using the defined repositories on your pacman.conf file.
If you want to test different packages or you have to build libguestfs, febootstrap will try to download again and again the packages from the internet.
The main reason is that it use a custom cachedir and root dir for fakeroot to take place and setup your new appliance.
I work-around that i posted a guide a few days back here. But that guide is telling you to edit your basic pacman.conf.
The developer of febootstrap, Richard WM Jones has a great amount of tolerance so i’ve bugged him enough to think about adding at febootstrap a command option for using your own pacman.conf file.
From today we (archers) can use febootstrap (from git at the moment - PKGBUILD is here) with our own custom pacman.conf file.
Below is a quick setup of using your own local/custom-repo/mirror with febootstrap without editing /etc/pacman.conf file.
If you have already downloaded or saved your packages to a custom location, you can bypass the first step.
The whole process doesnt need root privileges.
Step One:
$ mkdir -pv /tmp/cachedir
$ cp /var/cache/pacman/pkg/*pkg.tar.xz /tmp/cachedir/
$ repo-add /tmp/cachedir/local.db.tar.gz /tmp/cachedir/*
Step Two:
$ cp /etc/pacman.conf /tmp/
$ vim /tmp/pacman.conf
comment out the exist repo sections: core - extra - community
add the below lines
[local]
SigLevel = Never
Server = file:///tmp/cachedir/
Step three :
test it !
$ febootstrap -o /tmp/ -v --names rsync --packager-config /tmp/pacman.conf