Building the PH4NTXM ISO on CachyOS

PH4NTXM is a Debian-based live Linux distribution designed specifically for cybersecurity, privacy and operational security.

PH4NTXM is intended to be built and independently reviewed from source. Its build instructions are written for Debian 13 “trixie” on amd64.

We use CachyOS for most of our work, so we wanted to see whether we could build the ISO there without setting up a separate Debian machine. We could, but we had to account for a couple of differences in where CachyOS keeps its tools. These are the steps we followed to build the Abyss edition. CachyOS is only the build host; the finished ISO is still Debian-based.

1. Install the required CachyOS packages

First, install the tools needed to fetch the source, create the Debian filesystem, compress it and assemble the bootable image. The --needed option tells pacman to skip packages that are already installed.

$ sudo pacman -S --needed git python util-linux debootstrap debian-archive-keyring cpio rsync wget xz bzip2 file squashfs-tools libisoburn syslinux grub mtools dosfstools dpkg po4a

2. Install the live-build version expected by PH4NTXM

PH4NTXM’s configuration specifies live-build version 20250505+deb13u1. We downloaded that release from Debian and unpacked it into a working directory under /tmp.

$ cd /tmp
$ wget https://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/main/l/live-build/live-build_20250505+deb13u1.tar.xz
$ mkdir live-build-trixie
$ tar -xf live-build_20250505+deb13u1.tar.xz -C live-build-trixie --strip-components=1
$ cd live-build-trixie

Our first attempt to install it with $ sudo make install stopped at po4a - command not found. The package was installed, but CachyOS keeps po4a in /usr/bin/vendor_perl. Adding that directory to PATH for the installation command let make find it:

$ sudo env PATH="/usr/bin/vendor_perl:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin" make install

Check that the intended version is now available:

$ lb --version

It should report 20250505+deb13u1.

3. Clone PH4NTXM

Clone the project and move into the repository. The remaining build commands are run from this directory.

$ cd ~
$ git clone https://github.com/PH4NTXMOFFICIAL/PH4NTXM.git
$ cd PH4NTXM

4. Optionally prepare the Abyss edition

We ran the preparation step first so we could see that PH4NTXM assembled the Abyss configuration before attempting a full build. This step is optional and does not create an ISO.

$ ./build.sh --edition abyss --prepare-only

The prepared files are placed under build/abyss/config/. You can skip this step if you just want to run the build.

5. Build the ISO

On Debian, the project’s usual command for the Abyss edition is:

$ sudo ./build.sh --edition abyss

We tried that on CachyOS. The build reached the EFI image stage, then stopped with /usr/lib/live/build/efi-image: 86: mkfs.msdos: not found. Since dosfstools was already installed, this was a command search path problem rather than a missing package. The Debian build script expected traditional directories such as /usr/sbin to be in PATH.

We ran the build again with those directories included:

$ cd ~/PH4NTXM
$ sudo env PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin" ./build.sh --edition abyss

This time the EFI image stage completed and the ISO was produced. Both fixes above change PATH only for the commands shown; they do not require changes to PH4NTXM’s source files.

Future builds

For another Abyss build, return to the repository and use the command that worked on CachyOS. You do not need to run --prepare-only first; the build script prepares the edition itself.

$ cd ~/PH4NTXM
$ sudo env PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin" ./build.sh --edition abyss

PH4NTXM also has a Ghost edition. It uses the same packages and features as Abyss, but has a light appearance. To build it, change the edition name:

$ cd ~/PH4NTXM
$ sudo env PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin" ./build.sh --edition ghost

Output

Look under ~/PH4NTXM/output/ when the build finishes. PH4NTXM puts each export in its own timestamped directory, with the ISO and SHA256SUMS checksum file together.

NB. This guide was written solely to help Erik test the distribution.