Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT virtual stuff] gentoo vm appliance

[Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org>]

On Friday, July 1 at 17:44 (-0500), James Wall said:

> Thanks for the appliance image. it has come in handy for trying out
> multiple ideas and setups at once on my machine. Keep up the great
> work Albert! :)
> 

You're welcome.  I do have other appliances other than the "base"
appliance.  For example:

      * gnome: this a headless (or at least Xserver-less) GNOME
        appliance. It can serve a GNOME desktop via XDMCP or ssh.
      * hemp-node: This is almost like base, but applicable to my "hemp"
        project ( https://bitbucket.org/marduk/hemp ) .  Hemp is kind of
        like a "cloud in a box".  It's good for developing deployments
        via fabric
      * kde: This is just like the "gnome" appliance, except it serves
        KDE
      * lodgeit: This is a lodgeit
        ( http://www.pocoo.org/projects/lodgeit/ ) pastbin virtual
        appliance.  We use this at my job.
      * teamplayer: this is another one of my projects.  You can't
        really build it because it hasn't been released yet.  But
        basically it's a "Democratic Internet radio station".  We also
        use this at my job.
      * x: This is an "old-school" X appliance, like GNOME/KDE, except
        it serves TWM, xclock, xload, xterm, xeyes, etc. for a totally
        early 90's looking X desktop.
      * xfce: a "headless" XFCE desktop appliance.

I'm actually looking for ideas for other Gentoo appliances.  So if
anyone has an idea for one, let me know.

Also, if you happen to download and use the virtual appliance script
(Makefile), there are many more options to build images including:

      * "headless" appliances (serial console)
      * virtio (for kvm-based VMs)
      * external kernel image (for kvm (and possibly others))
      * Use dash instead of bash for the default shell
      * remove "build" (gentoo-critical) packages (e.g. gcc, portage,
        etc.).  This will make it so you can't ever use portage on the
        appliance, but it reduces the size of the appliance greatly.
      * Use a static /dev instead of udev
      * Build and use binary packages so you don't have to re-compile
        everything every time you build a new image.
      * Build/use/distribute stage4 tarballs of the appliance.  This
        really speeds up the creation of images too (e.g. I can build a
        "base" virtual appliance image on my laptop in less than 3
        minutes.
      * Use a different kernel and/or different kernel config.
      * Creates raw images, compressed QCOW, VMDK, and XVA.

I'd also welcome any other ideas for image-building features.

-a