This question might be stupid but what’s the difference of building the ISO following this document: Build VyOS — VyOS 1.4.x (sagitta) documentation
Vs the universa/generic ISO that is available in support.vyos.io download section?
And what will I lose if I use the generic ISO?
I’m actually not sure why those downloads are even there. In any case, the 1.2 (crux) train is very old and really should not be used on new installs.
The official VyOS distribution model is twofold:
The source code and build environment are freely available and you are welcome to build any version and any train (1.2, 1.3 or 1.4).
There is really no difference between building yourself and downloading the current nightly. Usually folks will build nightly themselves if they want to customize the build. For example, I need an ISO with a few additional applications that are not available in the standard distro.
What could be those applications that’s not available in the generic ISO? Can it be installed at a later time?
Which applications/packages you need are totally up to your needs. For example, I needed “jq” for some automations I have on some routers that use JSON, and also needed “sngrep” to be able to quickly debug SIP issues on some of my deployments.
VyOS is a Debian based distribution. It’s possible to add the Debian repo you’re VyOS version is based on to your VyOS’s router sources.list, then install the needed packages as usual with apt. This method is not recommended as you’ll have to repeat it every time you install/re-install. I always prefer to build a custom ISO with the proper packages already built-in and not modify routers.
I customize my build with:
And randomly some others I discover I want to try.
Ah that makes sense!
Thanks so much!