CyberOS — Cyber Department Arch Linux spin

A reproducible archiso profile that builds a live + installer ISO for the four-year programme. Everything is pre-installed and themed; students boot the USB, try it, and run one command to install it to disk.

Created and maintained by edbron (github.com/edbron) for the Cyber Department, University of Mines and Technology, Tarkwa.

Requirement	What ships
Base OS	Arch Linux (rolling)
Tiling WM	Hyprland + Quickshell (QML shell: bar, launcher, OSD, power menu), rofi, mako, swaybg, hyprlock, hypridle
Display manager	SDDM with the Pixie theme (pixie-sddm-git)
Editors	Neovim (themed config), VS Code (Microsoft build)
Terminal	foot + tmux (Ctrl-a prefix)
Browser	Firefox
Office	OnlyOffice Desktop Editors (onlyoffice-bin)
Virtualisation	VirtualBox (+ dkms host modules), guest utils for VMs
Networking	Cisco Packet Tracer (packettracer), Wireshark, nmap
Security lab	metasploit, ghidra, radare2, burp-free alternatives (sqlmap, nikto, gobuster), john, hashcat, hydra, aircrack-ng, bettercap, impacket, masscan, binwalk, volatility3, sleuthkit, yara, clamav, lynis, docker
Theme	macOS window UI palette — Red Shimmer #FF605C, Coronation Gold #FFBD44, Malachite #00CA4E, Light Silver #E1DFE1, Argent #C0BFC0, Tech White #F5F5F5. Dark by default, Super+Shift+T toggles light. Custom wallpaper per mode, Papirus icons, JetBrainsMono Nerd Font

Live session: auto-login as student, no password (passwordless sudo); root also has no password. Real passwords are set by the installer.

Layout

cyberos/
├── build.sh              # one-shot builder: AUR → local repo → mkarchiso
├── test-vm.sh            # boot the ISO in QEMU/UEFI
├── aur/packages.txt      # AUR packages to build into repo/   (+ put the Packet Tracer .deb here)
├── repo/                 # generated local pacman repo of the AUR builds
├── out/                  # finished ISOs
└── profile/              # the archiso profile
    ├── profiledef.sh     # ISO name/label/version, permissions
    ├── packages.x86_64   # EVERYTHING installed on the image (edit this to add/remove software)
    ├── pacman.conf.in    # build-time pacman.conf (local [cyberos] repo)
    └── airootfs/         # files overlaid onto the root filesystem
        ├── etc/skel/.config/{hypr,quickshell,foot,tmux,nvim,wofi,mako,...}   ← the theme
        ├── etc/sddm.conf.d/           # Pixie theme, live autologin
        ├── etc/{passwd,shadow,group}  # live users
        ├── root/customize_airootfs.sh # runs in the chroot during the build
        ├── usr/local/bin/cyberos-install   # the installer
        └── usr/share/backgrounds/cyberos/wallpaper.png

Building

On an Arch Linux host (a VM is fine; needs ~15 GB free, internet, ~20–40 min):

sudo pacman -S archiso base-devel git
# Packet Tracer is licensed: log in at https://www.netacad.com, download
#   "CiscoPacketTracer_<ver>_Ubuntu_64bit.deb" and copy it to aur/
./build.sh                  # → out/cyberos-YYYY.MM.DD-x86_64.iso
./test-vm.sh                # boot it in QEMU  (pacman -S qemu-desktop edk2-ovmf)

Useful flags: ./build.sh --skip-aur (reuse repo/), --only-aur, --clean.

On success, build.sh asks whether to delete work/ (AUR build trees + mkarchiso's scratch dir, easily several GB, none of it needed once repo/ has the packages and out/ has the ISO). Answering no keeps the next build fast; --keep-work/--purge-work skip the prompt (e.g. in CI).

Write to USB: sudo dd if=out/cyberos-*.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync (or Ventoy / Rufus in DD mode).

Installing on a student machine

Clicking Install CyberOS opens a graphical wizard: pick a disk, create the account, confirm, watch it run. It is a front-end only — every disk operation is still performed by cyberos-install, so the GUI and the CLI cannot drift apart. cyberos-install-gui --dry-run clicks through the whole wizard without live media and without touching a disk.

Boot the USB (UEFI or legacy BIOS both work), log in, open a terminal (Super+Enter) and:

sudo cyberos-install                       # interactive
# or unattended, e.g. for imaging a lab:
sudo cyberos-install --disk /dev/nvme0n1 --hostname lab-07 --user student \
     --password 'ChangeMe!' --tz Africa/Accra --fs ext4 --yes

The installer offers two modes:

• Erase whole disk — automatic GPT layout (BIOS-boot 1 MiB + EFI 1 GiB + root), ext4 or btrfs, 4 GiB swapfile. Boots on UEFI and legacy BIOS (protective-MBR boot flag is set for picky firmware).
• Manual — opens cfdisk on the chosen disk so you can shrink/keep other operating systems, then asks which partitions to use for / (formatted), the EFI System partition (keep or format — keeping an existing Windows ESP gives you dual boot via GRUB's os-prober), and an optional /home (keep or format).

Unattended examples:

sudo cyberos-install --disk /dev/nvme0n1 --erase --hostname lab-07 --user student --password 'x' --tz Africa/Accra --yes
sudo cyberos-install --disk /dev/sda --root /dev/sda5 --efi /dev/sda1 --home /dev/sda6 --password 'x' --yes

Either way it copies the live system, removes the live-only pieces (autologin, passwordless sudo, archiso initramfs hooks, sleep masks), creates the user, installs GRUB for both UEFI and BIOS, and the result is byte-for-byte the same software set as the ISO. GRUB is installed for both BIOS and UEFI regardless of how the live ISO was booted. If a machine ever loses its bootloader, boot the ISO and run sudo cyberos-repair-boot. archinstall is also on the ISO if you prefer a stock Arch install.

Customising

• Add/remove software → profile/packages.x86_64 (official repos) or aur/packages.txt (AUR).
• Theme/keybinds → profile/airootfs/etc/skel/.config/…. Colours live in hypr/theme.lua, quickshell/theme.json (consumed by Theme.qml), foot/foot.ini, nvim/lua/cyber.lua.
• Wallpaper → replace airootfs/usr/share/backgrounds/cyberos/wallpaper.png (also used by the SDDM greeter and the lock screen).
• Name/version → profile/profiledef.sh, airootfs/etc/os-release.
• NVIDIA labs → uncomment nvidia-open-dkms in packages.x86_64.
• Security-lab tools → the "security lab toolset" block in packages.x86_64; AUR-only extras (ffuf, burpsuite, responder, …) are listed there as a comment — add them to aur/packages.txt to include them.
• Keeping installed machines updated → host repo/ on an internal web server and uncomment the [cyberos] block in airootfs/etc/pacman.conf; otherwise the AUR packages stay at the version baked into the ISO while everything else updates from Arch mirrors.

Light and dark

CyberOS ships dark and switches with one command or Super+Shift+T:

cyberos-theme            # print the current mode (dark by default)
cyberos-theme light
cyberos-theme toggle

The palette lives in cyberos-theme alone, which generates the colours for Hyprland, the Quickshell bar/launcher/OSD/power menu, rofi, foot, mako, tmux and Neovim, sets the GTK/libadwaita colour scheme, and swaps the wallpaper. There is one source of truth, so the applications cannot drift apart. Already-open terminals keep their colours; new ones pick the new palette up. The shell (Quickshell) re-themes live — no restart needed — because Theme.qml watches quickshell/theme.json for changes.

Two notes on the palette. It is six colours — three accents and three near whites — with no dark tone, so light mode adds a readable text colour (#1D1D1F, #6E6E73 muted) and dark mode adds backgrounds (#1D1D1F, #2B2B2D, #3A3A3C); dark mode then uses Tech White and Argent for text. ANSI terminals need eight hues where the palette gives three, so blue/magenta/cyan follow the macOS system colours.

Key bindings (Hyprland)

Keys	Action
Super+Enter	terminal (foot)
Super+D	app launcher (rofi)
Super+I	Install CyberOS (live ISO)
Super+Tab	window switcher
Super+. / Super+=	emoji picker / calculator
Super+B / E / C	Firefox / files / VS Code
Super+Q	close window
Super+H/J/K/L	focus, +Shift move
Super+1..0	workspaces, +Shift move window
Super+F / V	fullscreen / float
Super+Escape	lock
Print	screenshot region → clipboard

Notes / caveats

• Arch is rolling: rebuild the ISO each term so students start from fresh packages.

• virtualbox-host-dkms and (optionally) nvidia-open-dkms are compiled during the build, so builds are slower than a plain archiso.

• Packet Tracer's PKGBUILD pins a checksum; build.sh re-computes it for the .deb you supply.

• The Hyprland config ships in the Lua format (etc/skel/.config/hypr/hyprland.lua); the legacy .conf is removed in Hyprland 0.57, and 0.56.2 already warns about it on every login. Colours come from theme.lua, generated by cyberos-theme — do not put hex values in hyprland.lua. hyprlock still reads the hyprlang theme.conf, which is generated alongside it.

• ufw is installed but not enabled. A default-deny inbound policy would silently break the exercises this ISO is for — Metasploit handlers, bind shells and local servers all listen — so labs work out of the box. Turn it on when the exercise is about firewalls:

  sudo ufw enable                  # deny inbound, allow outbound
  sudo systemctl enable ufw        # persist across reboots
  sudo ufw allow 4444/tcp          # open a port for a listener
  sudo ufw status verbose

• SSH is installed but not enabled. The live image ships root and student with empty passwords, so 20-cyberos-hardening.conf sets PermitRootLogin no and PermitEmptyPasswords no; installed systems inherit it.

• Secure Boot is not supported by archiso out of the box — disable it in firmware or enrol keys.

Contributing

Branch off main, name the branch for the area it touches (installer/, theme/, packages/, build/, docs/), open a pull request, and delete the branch after it merges. Run git config core.hooksPath .githooks once per clone and bats tests/ before you open it.

The full guide — branch prefixes and their paths, the fresh-clone warning, the test and build commands, and the commit conventions — is in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Author & credits

CyberOS — the archiso profile, installer, theming and build tooling in this repository — is the original work of edbron, for the Cyber Department at the University of Mines and Technology, Tarkwa.

It stands on other people's work, which keeps its own authorship:

• Arch Linux and archiso
• Hyprland and the wider hypr ecosystem (hyprlock, hypridle)
• Pixie SDDM theme — xCaptaiN09 (pixie-sddm-git)
• Historical: the earlier waybar theme was adapted from HANCORE-linux/waybar-themes V2.3; the shell is now Quickshell (QML), but the palette it carried lives on in cyberos-theme and theme.json
• The UMaT brand palette belongs to the University of Mines and Technology.