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

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

[Harry Putnam]

The times I've tried to get a recent gentoo version running in a vm on
windows turned out to be labor taking days to get right.

Does anyone know if there is a fairly current gentoo appliance
somewhere that I can just install and then update or customize?

I'd prefer to run it with vbox but if the appliance is vmware created
that's ok too.  I do have a license up to 6.5.

If that isn't available maybe someone has a fairly current kernel
config that is known to boot on a windows host with guest gentoo.

As I recall from my efforts, there were always problems with something
to do with scuzzi drivers or whatnot.

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

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 2:52 PM, Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> wrote:
> The times I've tried to get a recent gentoo version running in a vm on
> windows turned out to be labor taking days to get right.
>
> Does anyone know if there is a fairly current gentoo appliance
> somewhere that I can just install and then update or customize?
>
> I'd prefer to run it with vbox but if the appliance is vmware created
> that's ok too.  I do have a license up to 6.5.
>
> If that isn't available maybe someone has a fairly current kernel
> config that is known to boot on a windows host with guest gentoo.
>
> As I recall from my efforts, there were always problems with something
> to do with scuzzi drivers or whatnot.

Hi Harry,
   I have an up-to-date Gentoo 64-bit/KDE Virtualbox VM but I haven't
tested it on a Windows host. I suppose could try that given some time.

   I'd have no problem donating a copy if people wanted it and there
was some public place that we could put it. I don't want to run a
server here to do that though. It looks like it would be around 5GB if
I cleaned out /usr/portage/distfiles.

- Mark

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

[Harry Putnam]

Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Harry,
>    I have an up-to-date Gentoo 64-bit/KDE Virtualbox VM but I haven't
> tested it on a Windows host. I suppose could try that given some time.
>
>    I'd have no problem donating a copy if people wanted it and there
> was some public place that we could put it. I don't want to run a
> server here to do that though. It looks like it would be around 5GB if
> I cleaned out /usr/portage/distfiles.

That would be very handy.  If you are willing, there are probably many
better places than this to upload, but its the first one I ran across:
http://www.mediafire.com/

I'm testing it by uploading a stage3 which is only 153mb.  It's very
slow but I guess that is sort of expected.

30% completed in something like 3 minutes.

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

[kashani]

On 6/22/2011 2:52 PM, Harry Putnam wrote:
> If that isn't available maybe someone has a fairly current kernel
> config that is known to boot on a windows host with guest gentoo.
>

http://badapple.net/files/gentoo-vbox.config
Windows 7, vbox 4.0.8, gentoo-sources-2.6.36-r5, no video drivers

kashani

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

[Harry Putnam]

kashani <kashani-list@badapple.net> writes:

> On 6/22/2011 2:52 PM, Harry Putnam wrote:
>> If that isn't available maybe someone has a fairly current kernel
>> config that is known to boot on a windows host with guest gentoo.
>>
>
> http://badapple.net/files/gentoo-vbox.config
> Windows 7, vbox 4.0.8, gentoo-sources-2.6.36-r5, no video drivers

OK, that will be very handy .. thanks

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Wednesday, June 22 at 16:52 (-0500), Harry Putnam said:

> The times I've tried to get a recent gentoo version running in a vm on
> windows turned out to be labor taking days to get right.
> 
> Does anyone know if there is a fairly current gentoo appliance
> somewhere that I can just install and then update or customize?
> 
> I'd prefer to run it with vbox but if the appliance is vmware created
> that's ok too.  I do have a license up to 6.5.
> 
> If that isn't available maybe someone has a fairly current kernel
> config that is known to boot on a windows host with guest gentoo.
> 
> As I recall from my efforts, there were always problems with something
> to do with scuzzi drivers or whatnot.

I have a program that I use to create Gentoo VM appliances.  I have no
idea if it works with vbox or vmware as I run KVM, but I think it
*should* work.  Anyway if you want to try it you can or, if you want, it
also builds stage4 tarballs, so I can build you a stage4 tarball of a
base Gentoo install pretty easily (including kernel).  The stage4
(excluding portage) would be ~90MB (bz2).  The disk image (compressed
QCOW is about 120MB).

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

[Matthew Finkel]

On 06/22/11 20:11, Albert Hopkins wrote:
>
> On Wednesday, June 22 at 16:52 (-0500), Harry Putnam said:
>
>> The times I've tried to get a recent gentoo version running in a vm on
>> windows turned out to be labor taking days to get right.
>>
>> Does anyone know if there is a fairly current gentoo appliance
>> somewhere that I can just install and then update or customize?
>>
>> I'd prefer to run it with vbox but if the appliance is vmware created
>> that's ok too.  I do have a license up to 6.5.
>>
>> If that isn't available maybe someone has a fairly current kernel
>> config that is known to boot on a windows host with guest gentoo.
>>
>> As I recall from my efforts, there were always problems with something
>> to do with scuzzi drivers or whatnot.
> I have a program that I use to create Gentoo VM appliances.  I have no
> idea if it works with vbox or vmware as I run KVM, but I think it
> *should* work.  Anyway if you want to try it you can or, if you want, it
> also builds stage4 tarballs, so I can build you a stage4 tarball of a
> base Gentoo install pretty easily (including kernel).  The stage4
> (excluding portage) would be ~90MB (bz2).  The disk image (compressed
> QCOW is about 120MB)

The only issue with qcow2 is that in order to use it with VB, IIRC you
need to convert it to raw before you can import it.

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Wednesday, June 22 at 21:31 (-0400), Matthew Finkel said:

> > The stage4
> > (excluding portage) would be ~90MB (bz2).  The disk image (compressed
> > QCOW is about 120MB)
> 
> The only issue with qcow2 is that in order to use it with VB, IIRC you
> need to convert it to raw before you can import it.

Perhaps, but it's trivial to convert qcows to other formats.

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

[Matthew Finkel]

On 06/22/11 22:14, Albert Hopkins wrote:
> Perhaps, but it's trivial to convert qcows to other formats.
>
Oh, don't get me wrong, that's one reason I use qcow2 myself, but it's
either something he would have to deal with when he received it or the
conversion would increase the size of the disk image that would be
shipped to him.

Was just throwing in my 2-cents :)

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Thursday, June 23 at 00:35 (-0400), Matthew Finkel said:

> Oh, don't get me wrong, that's one reason I use qcow2 myself, but it's
> either something he would have to deal with when he received it or the
> conversion would increase the size of the disk image that would be
> shipped to him.

Yes, of course a raw image file will typically be bigger than a
compressed qcow, just as an unpacked stage4..tar.bz2 file is going to be
bigger than the original archive.  But in terms transferability,
compressed qcows are more efficient since they only include *used*
blocks and they are compressed.  I can convert the image into any of a
number of formats, but the issue then is it will be bigger, and thus
take me longer to upload it and the OP to download it.

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

[Matthew Finkel]

On 06/23/11 07:15, Albert Hopkins wrote:
>
> On Thursday, June 23 at 00:35 (-0400), Matthew Finkel said:
>
>> Oh, don't get me wrong, that's one reason I use qcow2 myself, but it's
>> either something he would have to deal with when he received it or the
>> conversion would increase the size of the disk image that would be
>> shipped to him.
> Yes, of course a raw image file will typically be bigger than a
> compressed qcow, just as an unpacked stage4..tar.bz2 file is going to be
> bigger than the original archive.  But in terms transferability,
> compressed qcows are more efficient since they only include *used*
> blocks and they are compressed.  I can convert the image into any of a
> number of formats, but the issue then is it will be bigger, and thus
> take me longer to upload it and the OP to download it
Yup, exactly :-)

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Thursday, June 23 at 12:32 (-0400), Matthew Finkel said:

> On 06/23/11 07:15, Albert Hopkins wrote:
> >
> > On Thursday, June 23 at 00:35 (-0400), Matthew Finkel said:
> >
> >> Oh, don't get me wrong, that's one reason I use qcow2 myself, but it's
> >> either something he would have to deal with when he received it or the
> >> conversion would increase the size of the disk image that would be
> >> shipped to him.
> > Yes, of course a raw image file will typically be bigger than a
> > compressed qcow, just as an unpacked stage4..tar.bz2 file is going to be
> > bigger than the original archive.  But in terms transferability,
> > compressed qcows are more efficient since they only include *used*
> > blocks and they are compressed.  I can convert the image into any of a
> > number of formats, but the issue then is it will be bigger, and thus
> > take me longer to upload it and the OP to download it
> Yup, exactly :-)
> 

I've uploaded a (390MB) vmdk.  I've been told by someone that it works
with vmware (not sure what version).

This was build just a few minutes ago with the latest stage3 tarball and
the latest portage snapshot.

http://starship.python.net/crew/marduk/base.vmdk

The root password is blank. It will force you to change it on first
login.

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Thursday, June 23 at 12:52 (-0400), Albert Hopkins said:


> I've uploaded a (390MB) vmdk.  I've been told by someone that it works
> with vmware (not sure what version).
> 
> This was build just a few minutes ago with the latest stage3 tarball and
> the latest portage snapshot.
> 
> http://starship.python.net/crew/marduk/base.vmdk
> 
> The root password is blank. It will force you to change it on first
> login.


Last night I realized that the mirror I had used to download stage3s and
portage snapshots hadn't been updated in over 30 days.

So I changed mirrors and re-created an image.  The new image should have
packages from the latest snapshot (as of an hour ago).  Also it has the
2.6.38-gentoo-r6 kernel.  The complete package list is here[1].  The
compressed vmdk image (89MB) is here[2].

[1] http://starship.python.net/crew/marduk/base-dist-package.lst
[2] http://starship.python.net/crew/marduk/base-dist.vmdk.bz2

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

[James Wall]

Albert,
Thanks for sharing the guest image. I have gotten it installed on my
virtualbox to allow me to experiment with it. Thanks again for sharing
your work.

James Wall
--
No trees were harmed in the sending of this message. However, a large
number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Monday, June 27 at 18:47 (-0500), James Wall said:

> Albert,
> Thanks for sharing the guest image. I have gotten it installed on my
> virtualbox to allow me to experiment with it. Thanks again for sharing
> your work.

Cool, now I at least know it works with vmware and virtualbox.

I will probably be uploading updated images every few days or so.

-a

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

[James Wall]

On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 7:46 PM, Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Monday, June 27 at 18:47 (-0500), James Wall said:
>
>> Albert,
>> Thanks for sharing the guest image. I have gotten it installed on my
>> virtualbox to allow me to experiment with it. Thanks again for sharing
>> your work.
>
> Cool, now I at least know it works with vmware and virtualbox.
Just for clarification and in case anyone else needs help with this,
the steps I followed in Virtualbox were as follows:
1. Create a new VM and select to add an existing disk image. I
navigated to the uncompressed file and selected it.
2. I then went into the properties of the VM and changed the
controller type to SCSI and readded the disk image.
Since I quickly realized I wanted more space to use as my
distfiles/portage server for my network, I then ran
3. VBoxManage clonehd /path/to/base-dist.vmdk /path/to/base-dist.vdi
--format VDI ; VBoxManage modifyhd /path/to/base-dist.vdi --resize
102400
4. I then went into the settings and selected the new image to have
the disk space available and partitioned the drive with the new space
set aside for /usr/portage/
> I will probably be uploading updated images every few days or so.
>
> -a
>
>
>
>
Hope this is useful.
James
--
No trees were harmed in the sending of this message. However, a large
number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Monday, June 27 at 22:44 (-0500), James Wall said:

> 2. I then went into the properties of the VM and changed the
> controller type to SCSI and readded the disk image.

If you let me know what controller virtualbox "natively" uses I can add
that to the kernel config.

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

[James Wall]

On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 8:07 AM, Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Monday, June 27 at 22:44 (-0500), James Wall said:
>
>> 2. I then went into the properties of the VM and changed the
>> controller type to SCSI and readded the disk image.
>
> If you let me know what controller virtualbox "natively" uses I can add
> that to the kernel config.
>
>
>
>
>

Albert,
it uses the AHCI driver for the sata controller.
James Wall
--
No trees were harmed in the sending of this message. However, a large
number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Tuesday, June 28 at 09:32 (-0500), James Wall said:

> Albert,
> it uses the AHCI driver for the sata controller.

You know it's odd, I was just talking with someone yesterday about why
don't the hypervisors default to AHCI since it's somewhat universal by
now.

Anyway, I will rebuild an image with AHCI support and upload it shortly.

-a

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Tuesday, June 28 at 10:57 (-0400), Albert Hopkins said:

> Anyway, I will rebuild an image with AHCI support and upload it
> shortly.

Done, uploaded to the same place:

http://starship.python.net/crew/marduk/base-dist.vmdk.bz2

I also made the image bigger (10GB).  Oddly enough, it compresses
smaller than the other by a couple of megs.

-a

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

[Harry Putnam]

Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org> writes:

> On Tuesday, June 28 at 10:57 (-0400), Albert Hopkins said:
>
>> Anyway, I will rebuild an image with AHCI support and upload it
>> shortly.
>
> Done, uploaded to the same place:
>
> http://starship.python.net/crew/marduk/base-dist.vmdk.bz2
>
> I also made the image bigger (10GB).  Oddly enough, it compresses
> smaller than the other by a couple of megs.

In case you are interested, I had problems with that appliance.

[I'm running virutal box]

I followed James W's walk thru of how to use it with Virtual box.

There is apparently no `portage' installed which meant that emerge
would fail since /etc/make.profile is a dangling link.  Once that was
resolved I kept getting really strange output from emerge. It appeared
to be the output of something like vmstat or maybe the upper portion
of `top'.  Stuff about user loads and such... right after the first
few lines of emerge output, and nothing was getting emerged.

Very possible it is pilot error; here is what the output of emerging
gpm looks like:

  Calculating dependencies... done!
  [ebuild  N    ] sys-libs/gpm-1.20.6  USE="(-selinux)" 1,251 kB
  
  Total: 1 package (1 new), Size of downloads: 1,251 kB

  >>> Verifying ebuild manifests
  >>> Emerging (1 of 1) sys-libs/gpm-1.20.6
  >>> Jobs: 0 of 1 complete, 1 running                Load avg: 1.75, 1.16, 0.95

And there it stays... so emerge does not work.

So it appears, so far, the appliance is not usable on Vbox.  

Oh, I'm referring to the 4GB version.  The 10GB version demands a
password so couldn't even start on it.




 

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

[Harry Putnam]

Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:

> resolved I kept getting really strange output from emerge. It appeared
> to be the output of something like vmstat or maybe the upper portion
> of `top'.  Stuff about user loads and such... right after the first
> few lines of emerge output, and nothing was getting emerged.

I have to take that back... when I looked after writing that message,
the emerge had finished...It happens on everything I emerge, so I
guess that is some kind of new output I've never seen from emerge
before.

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Friday, July 1 at 10:36 (-0500), Harry Putnam said:

> Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org> writes:
> 
> > On Tuesday, June 28 at 10:57 (-0400), Albert Hopkins said:
> >
> >> Anyway, I will rebuild an image with AHCI support and upload it
> >> shortly.
> >
> > Done, uploaded to the same place:
> >
> > http://starship.python.net/crew/marduk/base-dist.vmdk.bz2
> >
> > I also made the image bigger (10GB).  Oddly enough, it compresses
> > smaller than the other by a couple of megs.
> 
> In case you are interested, I had problems with that appliance.
> 
> [I'm running virutal box]
> 
> I followed James W's walk thru of how to use it with Virtual box.
> 
> There is apparently no `portage' installed which meant that emerge
> would fail since /etc/make.profile is a dangling link. 

Yeah, sorry if I didn't mention before.  In the interest of size, I
remove the portage tree (and also kernel sources) before creating the
image.  So in order to do portage-related stuff one must first:

# emerge --sync

>  Once that was
> resolved I kept getting really strange output from emerge. It appeared
> to be the output of something like vmstat or maybe the upper portion
> of `top'.  Stuff about user loads and such... right after the first
> few lines of emerge output, and nothing was getting emerged.
> 
> Very possible it is pilot error; here is what the output of emerging
> gpm looks like:
> 
>   Calculating dependencies... done!
>   [ebuild  N    ] sys-libs/gpm-1.20.6  USE="(-selinux)" 1,251 kB
>   
>   Total: 1 package (1 new), Size of downloads: 1,251 kB
> 
>   >>> Verifying ebuild manifests
>   >>> Emerging (1 of 1) sys-libs/gpm-1.20.6
>   >>> Jobs: 0 of 1 complete, 1 running                Load avg: 1.75, 1.16, 0.95
> 
> And there it stays... so emerge does not work.

This appears normal to me...

Oh perhaps because I have "--jobs=2" in EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS
in /etc/make.conf.  That's what the output normally looks like if you
use --jobs...

Nevertheless the output definately looks normal (to me).  You can change
make.conf to suit your tastes.

> So it appears, so far, the appliance is not usable on Vbox.  

Should still be usable.

> Oh, I'm referring to the 4GB version.  The 10GB version demands a
> password so couldn't even start on it.

That should not be the case with it requiring a password, or else I
uploaded the wrong image.  Nevertheless, I'll upload another one
shortly.

-a

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Friday, July 1 at 11:55 (-0400), Albert Hopkins said:

> > Oh, I'm referring to the 4GB version.  The 10GB version demands a
> > password so couldn't even start on it.
> 
> That should not be the case with it requiring a password, or else I
> uploaded the wrong image.  Nevertheless, I'll upload another one
> shortly.

Now uploaded.

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

[Harry Putnam]

Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org> writes:


[...]

>
> Yeah, sorry if I didn't mention before.  In the interest of size, I
> remove the portage tree (and also kernel sources) before creating the
> image.  So in order to do portage-related stuff one must first:
>
> # emerge --sync

[...]

> Should still be usable.

You may have seen my last post by now, where I retracted some of my
earlier post.

I'm still seeing something that probably needs fixing.

In the shell where the initial login came up I keep seeing this every
5 minutes:

  INIT: ld "so" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

OH, and what does the `FEATURES=' entry in /etc/make.conf do? 

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Friday, July 1 at 11:42 (-0500), Harry Putnam said:

> Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org> writes:
> 
> 
> [...]
> 
> >
> > Yeah, sorry if I didn't mention before.  In the interest of size, I
> > remove the portage tree (and also kernel sources) before creating the
> > image.  So in order to do portage-related stuff one must first:
> >
> > # emerge --sync
> 
> [...]
> 
> > Should still be usable.
> 
> You may have seen my last post by now, where I retracted some of my
> earlier post.
> 
> I'm still seeing something that probably needs fixing.
> 
> In the shell where the initial login came up I keep seeing this every
> 5 minutes:
> 
>   INIT: ld "so" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
> 
You probably saw "s0".  That's the inittab for getty running on a serial
console.. should be disabled for non-headless.  I'll need to fix that.

> OH, and what does the `FEATURES=' entry in /etc/make.conf do? 

You've never heard of FEATURES (or --jobs)?  May want to peruse the man
pages a bit.  FEATURES is a very fundamental part of portage (man
make.conf).

Will post when the inittab is fixed.

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

[Harry Putnam]

Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org> writes:

[...]

> You've never heard of FEATURES (or --jobs)?  May want to peruse the man
> pages a bit.  FEATURES is a very fundamental part of portage (man
> make.conf).

Sorry for being a lazy slug... I've used the same /etc/make.conf for
several yrs with no problems... so didn't really think to look there.
That's why I asked... didn't know where to look... dumb perhaps but
just didn't cross my mind.

I've found my systems to do pretty well without those FEATURES or --jobs
entries.

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

[Alex Schuster]

Harry Putnam writes:

> Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org> writes:

> > You've never heard of FEATURES (or --jobs)?  May want to peruse the
> > man pages a bit.  FEATURES is a very fundamental part of portage (man
> > make.conf).
> 
> Sorry for being a lazy slug... I've used the same /etc/make.conf for
> several yrs with no problems... so didn't really think to look there.

Have a look at /usr/share/portage/config/make.conf.example and compare, you 
might be surprised.


> I've found my systems to do pretty well without those FEATURES or --jobs
> entries.

Oh, --jobs is really really cool. Apart from the small speedup I like it 
because of the nicer, cleaner progress output you get from your emerges.

	Wonko

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Friday, July 1 at 14:10 (-0500), Harry Putnam said:

> Sorry for being a lazy slug... I've used the same /etc/make.conf for
> several yrs with no problems... so didn't really think to look there.
> That's why I asked... didn't know where to look... dumb perhaps but
> just didn't cross my mind.
> 
> I've found my systems to do pretty well without those FEATURES or --jobs
> entries.

Sure. I did not mean to imply one *must* know about FEATURES in order to
maintain a Gentoo system, only that it is a fundamental part of Gentoo
that may be of interest to you (it's even mentioned in the Handbook).
The --jobs parameter is not so important and, while it's been been a
feature of portage for a while, it hasn't nearly been around as long as
FEATURES (which has been part of Gentoo for as long as I can remember).

Well, thanks for pointing out the error in my appliance creation script
that mistakenly sets up the serial console on non-headless VMs.  I've
fixed the bug and created and uploaded a new image.

-a

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

[James Wall]

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! :)




--
No trees were harmed in the sending of this message. However, a large
number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

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

[Albert Hopkins]

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

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

[Harry Putnam]

Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org> writes:

> Well, thanks for pointing out the error in my appliance creation script
> that mistakenly sets up the serial console on non-headless VMs.  I've
> fixed the bug and created and uploaded a new image.

My tiny input isn't much... the big thanks goes to you and to James
for the walkthru to use Vbox on your appliances.

At the risk of exposing further ignorance on my part, I'm curious what
it means in fstab where you have:

  /.swap      none     swap     sw                0 0

At the swap line.

That's another thing I haven't seen before.I mean the /DOTswap
`/.swap', does it just mean there is no swap?

Its hard to google because google doesn't recognize the . (dot), so a
search with terms like:

    site:gentoo.org  fstab "/.swap"  

still finds /swap (with no dot) google throws out the dot.

I've noticed similar behavior on google if you try something
like "--color=auto"  as a search term.. google appears to throw
out the `--' (dashdash) and the `=' equal sign. 

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Friday, July 1 at 19:22 (-0500), Harry Putnam said:

> Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org> writes:
[...]
> At the risk of exposing further ignorance on my part, I'm curious what
> it means in fstab where you have:
> 
>   /.swap      none     swap     sw                0 0
> 
> At the swap line.
> 
> That's another thing I haven't seen before.I mean the /DOTswap
> `/.swap', does it just mean there is no swap?

For the virtual appliances, I use a swap file instead of a swap
partition, partially because I'm lazy and partially because it's easier
to resize later on than a partition.

The "." just means it's a standard "hidden" file per Unix convention[1]
(i.e. you won't normally see if if you do "ls" but will if you do "ls
-a".

> Its hard to google because google doesn't recognize the . (dot), so a
> search with terms like:
> 
>     site:gentoo.org  fstab "/.swap"  
> 
> still finds /swap (with no dot) google throws out the dot.
> 
> I've noticed similar behavior on google if you try something
> like "--color=auto"  as a search term.. google appears to throw
> out the `--' (dashdash) and the `=' equal sign. 

You'd probably not find anything useful via Google anyway.  It's just a
standard swap file, but the name starts with a ".".  You can rename it
to whatever you want.

-a

[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_file_and_hidden_directory#Unix_and_Unix-like_environments

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Friday, July 1 at 11:42 (-0500), Harry Putnam said:

> In the shell where the initial login came up I keep seeing this every
> 5 minutes:
> 
>   INIT: ld "so" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

Oh, you can also do this manually by commenting out the s0 entry
in /etc/inittab.

-a

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

[Pandu Poluan]

-original message-
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] [OT virtual stuff] gentoo vm appliance
From: Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org>
Date: 2011-06-23 07:11

>I have a program that I use to create Gentoo VM appliances.  I have no
>idea if it works with vbox or vmware as I run KVM, but I think it
>*should* work.  Anyway if you want to try it you can or, if you want, it
>also builds stage4 tarballs, so I can build you a stage4 tarball of a
>base Gentoo install pretty easily (including kernel).  The stage4
>(excluding portage) would be ~90MB (bz2).  The disk image (compressed
>QCOW is about 120MB).

Any such program to build XenServer appliances (.xva) ?

Rgds,
--
FdS Pandu E Poluan
~ IT Optimizer ~

Sent from Nokia E72-1

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Thursday, June 23 at 08:16 (+0700), Pandu Poluan said:

> Any such program to build XenServer appliances (.xva) ?

I haven't any.  I have no experience with XenServer appliances.

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

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Thursday 23 June 2011 08:16:33 Pandu Poluan wrote:
> -original message-
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] [OT virtual stuff] gentoo vm appliance
> From: Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org>
> Date: 2011-06-23 07:11
> 
> >I have a program that I use to create Gentoo VM appliances.  I have no
> >idea if it works with vbox or vmware as I run KVM, but I think it
> >*should* work.  Anyway if you want to try it you can or, if you want, it
> >also builds stage4 tarballs, so I can build you a stage4 tarball of a
> >base Gentoo install pretty easily (including kernel).  The stage4
> >(excluding portage) would be ~90MB (bz2).  The disk image (compressed
> >QCOW is about 120MB).
> 
> Any such program to build XenServer appliances (.xva) ?

Shouldn't it work similarly?
Eg. start an appliance and install using the stage4?

I use Xen directly and as long as I can create and fill the partitions for the 
VM, any "creation" tool should work.

--
Joost

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Thursday, June 23 at 09:54 (+0200), Joost Roeleveld said:

> > Any such program to build XenServer appliances (.xva) ?
> 
> Shouldn't it work similarly?
> Eg. start an appliance and install using the stage4?
> 
> I use Xen directly and as long as I can create and fill the partitions
> for the 
> VM, any "creation" tool should work.


Yes the stage4 should work similarly.  However Pandu was asking about
building ".xva" which I know nothing about, unless an .xva is similar
to/same as a stage4 (I have no idea)?

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

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Thursday 23 June 2011 07:18:38 Albert Hopkins wrote:
> On Thursday, June 23 at 09:54 (+0200), Joost Roeleveld said:
> > > Any such program to build XenServer appliances (.xva) ?
> > 
> > Shouldn't it work similarly?
> > Eg. start an appliance and install using the stage4?
> > 
> > I use Xen directly and as long as I can create and fill the partitions
> > for the
> > VM, any "creation" tool should work.
> 
> Yes the stage4 should work similarly.  However Pandu was asking about
> building ".xva" which I know nothing about, unless an .xva is similar
> to/same as a stage4 (I have no idea)?

.xva is a format specifically for Citrix Xen.

There are tools to convert "classic" Xen VMs to "xva" files:
http://www.xen.org/files/xva/README

I would be willing to assist in getting this tool to work with your program. 
All I'd need is a copy of your program along with assistance from Pandu Poluan 
to test the resulting XVA files.

I do not run Citrix XenServer and have no need for it as Xen itself works fine 
for me.

-- 
Joost

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

[Albert Hopkins]

On Thursday, June 23 at 13:45 (+0200), Joost Roeleveld said:

> > Yes the stage4 should work similarly.  However Pandu was asking
> about
> > building ".xva" which I know nothing about, unless an .xva is
> similar
> > to/same as a stage4 (I have no idea)?
> 
> .xva is a format specifically for Citrix Xen.
> 
> There are tools to convert "classic" Xen VMs to "xva" files:
> http://www.xen.org/files/xva/README
> 
> I would be willing to assist in getting this tool to work with your
> program. 
> All I'd need is a copy of your program along with assistance from
> Pandu Poluan 
> to test the resulting XVA files.
> 
> I do not run Citrix XenServer and have no need for it as Xen itself
> works fine 
> for me.

Thank you. I downloaded the xva.py script and created a target to
create .xva files.  The script appeared to run fine.  No errors, but I
cannot verify that the .xva is good.  I used hvm and converted the raw
image.  The .xva is 4.1G whereras the original raw image is only 414MB
(sparse).  The .xva appears to be a tar file, but I guess w/o the -S
flag passed to gnu tar.

My program is hosted on bitbucket[1].  The documentation for it is
outdated.

-a

[1] https://bitbucket.org/marduk/virtual-appliance/wiki/Home

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

[Pandu Poluan]

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 20:12, Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Thursday, June 23 at 13:45 (+0200), Joost Roeleveld said:
>
>> > Yes the stage4 should work similarly.  However Pandu was asking
>> about
>> > building ".xva" which I know nothing about, unless an .xva is
>> similar
>> > to/same as a stage4 (I have no idea)?
>>
>> .xva is a format specifically for Citrix Xen.
>>
>> There are tools to convert "classic" Xen VMs to "xva" files:
>> http://www.xen.org/files/xva/README
>>
>> I would be willing to assist in getting this tool to work with your
>> program.
>> All I'd need is a copy of your program along with assistance from
>> Pandu Poluan
>> to test the resulting XVA files.
>>
>> I do not run Citrix XenServer and have no need for it as Xen itself
>> works fine
>> for me.
>
> Thank you. I downloaded the xva.py script and created a target to
> create .xva files.  The script appeared to run fine.  No errors, but I
> cannot verify that the .xva is good.  I used hvm and converted the raw
> image.  The .xva is 4.1G whereras the original raw image is only 414MB
> (sparse).  The .xva appears to be a tar file, but I guess w/o the -S
> flag passed to gnu tar.
>
> My program is hosted on bitbucket[1].  The documentation for it is
> outdated.
>
> -a
>
> [1] https://bitbucket.org/marduk/virtual-appliance/wiki/Home

I'll give it a drive tomorrow (already 21:13 here in my country)

Rgds,
-- 
Pandu E Poluan
~ IT Optimizer ~
Visit my Blog: http://pepoluan.posterous.com
Google Talk:    pepoluan
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Skype:            pepoluan

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

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Thursday 23 June 2011 09:12:15 Albert Hopkins wrote:
> On Thursday, June 23 at 13:45 (+0200), Joost Roeleveld said:
> > > Yes the stage4 should work similarly.  However Pandu was asking
> > 
> > about
> > 
> > > building ".xva" which I know nothing about, unless an .xva is
> > 
> > similar
> > 
> > > to/same as a stage4 (I have no idea)?
> > 
> > .xva is a format specifically for Citrix Xen.
> > 
> > There are tools to convert "classic" Xen VMs to "xva" files:
> > http://www.xen.org/files/xva/README
> > 
> > I would be willing to assist in getting this tool to work with your
> > program.
> > All I'd need is a copy of your program along with assistance from
> > Pandu Poluan
> > to test the resulting XVA files.
> > 
> > I do not run Citrix XenServer and have no need for it as Xen itself
> > works fine
> > for me.
> 
> Thank you. I downloaded the xva.py script and created a target to
> create .xva files.  The script appeared to run fine.  No errors, but I
> cannot verify that the .xva is good.  I used hvm and converted the raw
> image.  The .xva is 4.1G whereras the original raw image is only 414MB
> (sparse).  The .xva appears to be a tar file, but I guess w/o the -S
> flag passed to gnu tar.

Yes, that's what I read on the web as well. A tar-file filled with silly-named 
files and an XML-file containing the configuration. :)

> My program is hosted on bitbucket[1].  The documentation for it is
> outdated.
> 
> -a
> 
> [1] https://bitbucket.org/marduk/virtual-appliance/wiki/Home

I'll have a look at it later.

-- 
Joost

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

[Pandu Poluan]

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 18:18, Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org> wrote:
>
> On Thursday, June 23 at 09:54 (+0200), Joost Roeleveld said:
>
> > > Any such program to build XenServer appliances (.xva) ?
> >
> > Shouldn't it work similarly?
> > Eg. start an appliance and install using the stage4?
> >
> > I use Xen directly and as long as I can create and fill the partitions
> > for the
> > VM, any "creation" tool should work.
>
>
> Yes the stage4 should work similarly.  However Pandu was asking about
> building ".xva" which I know nothing about, unless an .xva is similar
> to/same as a stage4 (I have no idea)?

Um, an ".xva" is more like a qcow2 file.

With Citrix' XenCenter, all I have to do is "import" the xva, and
XenServer automagically creates a VM with a specified RAM, specified
storage, specified cores, etc.

Of course these settings (RAM, storage, cores) can be modified
post-import, but usually xva-makers already set the settings to the
recommended minimum. So, it saves the xva users from planning stage
:-)

Plus, xva-packaged appliances are usually already configured to run in
PV-mode, thus giving the highest performance over XenServer.

Rgds,
--
Pandu E Poluan
~ IT Optimizer ~
Visit my Blog: http://pepoluan.posterous.com
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