Subject: Re: [vserver] Mix and match guest distributions
From: "Roderick A. Anderson" <raanders@cyber-office.net>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 15:04:12 -0700

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
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