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

[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.

[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

[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.

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

[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! :)




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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

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

[Pandu Poluan]

-original message-
Subject: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT virtual stuff] gentoo vm appliance
From: Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com>
Date: 2011-07-02 07:22

>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 means the system is using a swapfile -- whose name is '.swap' and located in the root directory '/' -- rather than a swap partition.

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

Nope. You can call the file 'my_awesome_file_for_swapping' and put it in /var/cache, resulting in '/var/cache/my_awesome_file_for_swapping' instead of '/.swap'.

The dot, as usual, is to un-clutter the output of 'ls /' (unless you use the -a switch, of course)

Note: If you want to use your own file, don't forget to 'mkswap /path/to/file' *before* replacing the entry in fstab

>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. 

Somewhere in the jungle of documents in Google's help system, Google explained that they index *only* based on letters, and strip out symbols. Except for symbols that became part of a trademark, e.g., 'C#'.


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

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