FREEDOM-MAKER(1)

📦
version 0.35 · 4 versions
, in ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 FREEDOM-MAKER(1) — the FreedomBox Manual, but make it make sense 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, because we're about to talk about freedom-maker — it's a 1 page in the FreedomBox Manual and it is literally the image builder for FreedomBox. no cap. let's get into it 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

freedom-maker — the image builder for FreedomBox, aka the thing that makes the little boxes happen 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

freedom-maker [--build-stamp] [--image-size] [--build-mirror] [--mirror]
              [--distribution] [--add-release-component] [--package]
              [--custom-package] [--enable-backports]
              [--disable-backports] [--build-dir] [--log-level]
              [--hostname] [--sign] [--force] [--build-in-ram]
              [--skip-compression] [--with-build-dep] [targets]
              [-h, --help]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so FreedomBox is a community project — like, a whole collective of people — building and designing and promoting personal servers that run free software for private, personal communications. it's a networking appliance, which is a fancy way of saying it's designed so you can interface with the rest of the Internet while keeping your privacy protected and your data secure. she's giving main character energy but for your home network.

and like, what does she host? oh literally everything bestie: blog, wiki, website, social network, email, web proxy, and even a Tor relay — all on a device that can straight up replace your wireless router so that your data stays with you. not with some corporation. periodt. 👑

and freedom-maker? that's the tool that builds FreedomBox images for all sorts of single board computers, virtual machines, and general purpose computers. it's the factory. the vibe. the whole thing. ✨

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • --build-stamp — the build stamp you want slapped onto the image file names 🏷️
  • --image-size — how big the image you're building should be
  • --build-mirror — which Debian mirror to use while building
  • --mirror — which Debian mirror to use inside the built image (yes these are two different things, stay with me)
  • --distribution — which Debian release goes in the built image
  • --add-release-component — add an extra Debian release component (something other than main)
  • --package — install extra packages into the image
  • --custom-package — install a package from a DEB file into the image
  • --enable-backports — deprecated: backports are now enabled for stable images by default, so like, she's retired 💀
  • --disable-backports — turn backports off in the image
  • --build-dir — the directory where images get built and the log file gets created
  • --log-level' — the logging level. pick one of ('critical', 'error', 'warn', 'info', 'debug'). the default log level is 'debug'. (and yes the flag is written with that little apostrophe, we don't make the rules 🙈)
  • --hostname — the hostname to set inside the built images
  • --sign — sign the images with the default GPG key after building 🔐
  • --force — force a rebuild of images even when the required image already exists
  • --build-in-ram — build the image in RAM so it's faster. warning: this needs free RAM about the size of the disk image, so check before you commit bestie 🧠
  • --with-build-dep — include build dependencies in the image
  • targets — the image targets to build. choose one or more of: a20-olinuxino-lime, a20-olinuxino-lime2, a20-olinuxino-micro, amd64, arm64, armhf, banana-pro, beaglebone, cubieboard2, cubietruck, lamobo-r1, orange-pi-zero, pcduino3, pine64-lts, pine64-plus, qemu-amd64, raspberry2, raspberry3, raspberry3-b-plus, raspberry64, vagrant virtualbox-amd64

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

Example 1. Build BeagleBone image

$ freedom-maker beaglebone

Build a FreedomBox image for the BeagleBone Single Board Computer. iconic. 🍓

Example 2. Build all images

$ freedommaker a20-olinuxino-lime a20-olinuxino-lime2
      a20-olinuxino-micro amd64 arm64 armhf banana-pro beaglebone cubieboard2
      cubietruck lamobo-r1 orange-pi-zero pcduino3 pine64-lts pine64-plus
      qemu-amd64 raspberry2 raspberry3 raspberry3-b-plus raspberry64 vagrant
      virtualbox-amd64

Build all the available FreedomBox images using freedom-maker. she ate and left no crumbs 🔥

😭 BUGS 😭

see the freedom-maker issue tracker[1] for a full list of known issues and TODO items. ngl it's worth a peek before you go blaming yourself 💜

👑 AUTHOR 👑

FreedomBox Developers

📝 NOTES 📝

  1. freedom-maker issue tracker https://salsa.debian.org/freedombox-team/freedom-maker/-/issues

and that's the whole page bestie 🫶 this was freedom-maker version 0.32, dated 02/03/2026, straight from the FreedomBox Manual. go build something cute. slay, stay safe, back up your data. 💖✨🎀

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