Re: [vserver] Mix and match guest distributions

From: Roderick A. Anderson <raanders_at_cyber-office.net>
Date: Thu 14 Apr 2011 - 23:04:12 BST
Message-ID: <4DA76F5C.7020303@cyber-office.net>

Daniel Hokka Zakrisson wrote:
> Roderick A. Anderson wrote:
>> Making another pass at some questions I've had over the years. I'm
>> (re)looking at what distributions are used for the host and how to get
>> other distributions in as guests.
>>
>> Excellent information on the web site but I haven't been able to find a
>> few things.
>>
>> 1. Is it possible to build a non-Gentoo based guest template?
>>
>> Say I have a CentOS or Ubuntu guest on one system and want _VERY_
>> similar bunches of guests on other systems. Can I build a template of a
>> guest to put somewhere (CD/DVD, USB thumb, network) and use as needed?
>
> Sure. -m template is not at all Gentoo specific.

I thought so but I found no examples. This is great.

>> 2. If so, how do I create the template?
>>
>> Is it as simple as building a tarball of a (non-running) guest?
>
> I'd use cpio as it does hardlinks correctly, but yes.

If you have a minute or two could you refresh my memory. Hardlinks
"correctly" how? Heck I'll dig into the man pages later and see if I
can figure the nuances of tar verses cpio.

>> 3. And if I'm heading down a good path what would you say is the most
>> stripped down distribution that could be used for the host?
>>
>> Yes disk space is cheap and I can and do turn off all the
>> non-essential services but every time I check for updates there is a
>> bunch of stuff I have to download because of the coarse granularity of
>> the dependencies of so many packages. (Would that be a mouth full if I
>> had to say it out loud?)
>
> I run several CentOS systems with root filesystems <2GB, but to each
> their own.

Any tricks you can suggest on getting a minimal CentOS(/Linux-Vserver)
host install?

TIA,
Rod

-- 
Received on Thu Apr 14 23:04:25 2011
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