Hi Nils,
Nils Toedtmann wrote:
Dear CentOS developers,
there is a demand for ready-to-boot virtual machine images for distros like CentOS. Since i am an afinicado of CentOS and Xen, i would like to build and maintain a CentOS5-image. Is centos.org interested in hosting such a sub-project? Testing and tasting CentOS would get much easier, it would help making CentOS more popular.
Sounds interesting, and going by just the amount of times such questions get asked, I'd say there were a fair few people interested in this as well.
Planned features:
<- lots of interesting stuff ->
Different flavors:
<- lots of interesting stuff ->
RoadMap:
- wait for CentOS5-beta2 ;-)
Why ?
CentOS-4 is in quite a decent shape to make it into VM's and _lots_ people are going to want VM's for CentOS-3 ( Q: Why? A: I can imagine that lots of people who run CentOS are going to want to move to CentOS-5 for its newer hardware support and better performance on very high end machines ). It makes much sense to move the host to C5 and have VM's run the C3/ C4 roles.
One of the things on the ToDo list here is a document for a known process to help with this migration -> Move a C3/C4 machine into a VM under C5, so that your C3/C4 apps remain supported and function as they do now, while still getting the added benefit of C5 on the host.
- create and post a minimal CentOS5-beta2 i386 image with xen- and vmware configs, wait for reviews/bugreport
- create and post a standard desktop CentOS5-beta2 i386 image, wait for reviews/bugreport
Once there is a basic setup and required infrastructure in place, doing roles is just a question of adding some more details to scripts etc, I am sure there are many roles we can address like this.
- if there are enough positive reports, repeat for CentOS5-final
We are really not interested in doing / spending time on something that is not going to be there for CentOS-5/Release - so if you are getting involved, do so with the intent of seeing this through.
- release when/if centos.org is pleased with the (bugfixed) images
yes, we have a QA team now!
Are you interested in such a project? I am eager for comments.
You have my attention and I am happy to push this along from the inside, but if we are going to do this - lets try and cover the spectrum, not just focus on C5 ( specially taking on board what Daniel has said, C5 VM's are trivial once you have the C5 host running ) - One (of the many ) places where users are going to see really good benefit is when we can provide some alternatives to move their C3 / C4 machines into.
Still interested ?
- KB