systembu

Beta status: This project is still under active development and some parts may change or break.

SystemBU ISO Creator builds a Debian amd64 live ISO with a lightweight XFCE desktop, a quiet boot experience, and two bundled desktop tools:

• SystemBU for disk and partition backup/restore
• SystemPart for basic partition management

The tools are packaged as local .deb files during the build and are added to the ISO with desktop and start menu launchers.

Project Layout

• systembu_iso_creator_debian.py - standalone Debian CLI builder
• systembu_iso_creator_wsl.pyw - Windows/WSL builder with GUI and CLI mode
• build/systembu_desktop_setup.sh - live system desktop and boot setup
• tools/systembu.py - backup and restore application
• tools/systempart.py - partition utility
• tools/requirements.txt - Python package requirements for the tools

What The ISO Includes

• Debian trixie live system
• XFCE desktop
• LightDM autologin setup
• Plymouth splash and quiet boot settings
• Desktop and start menu launchers for SystemBU and SystemPart
• Local .deb packaging for both Python tools

Dependencies

Tool dependencies

Python requirements:

• PySide6
• cryptography for encrypted backups

SystemBU also relies on common Linux system tools such as util-linux, parted, partclone, e2fsprogs, and ntfs-3g.

SystemPart relies on parted, util-linux, e2fsprogs, dosfstools, and ntfs-3g.

Both GUI tools are intended to run as root on Linux.

Build dependencies

The builders can auto-install the required host packages when needed. The main build requirements are:

• live-build
• debootstrap
• squashfs-tools
• xorriso
• grub-pc-bin
• grub-efi-amd64-bin
• mtools
• dosfstools

Building

Debian shell

Run directly inside a Debian environment:

sudo python3 systembu_iso_creator_debian.py

Useful options:

python3 systembu_iso_creator_debian.py --help

Windows / WSL

Start the GUI:

python systembu_iso_creator_wsl.pyw

Or run headless:

python systembu_iso_creator_wsl.pyw --cli

The WSL builder is designed for a Debian WSL distro and can also auto-install missing host packages.

Output

The generated ISO is written to the project root as:

systembu-amd64.iso