[CentOS-virt] Preferred method of provisioning VM images

Thu Jun 12 10:34:38 UTC 2014
Peter <peter at pajamian.dhs.org>

On 06/11/2014 04:21 AM, Lars Kurth wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> following the discussion on about documentation, I was wondering whether 
> we need to look at a standard way in which we recommend how to provision 
> images for VMs. Am starting this with a Xen hat, but the discussion 
> should not be specific to this. There are a number of options, but all 
> have some trade-offs
> 
> == #1 virt-install ==
> == #2 xen-tools ==
> == #3 virt-builder (http://libguestfs.org/virt-builder.1.html) ==
> == #4 Cloud Image from Cloud Image SIG ==

This is not a complete list of the ways you can install a VM either.  My
personal preference is to manually create the filesystem for the VM and
then install the OS core with yum.  Then after tweaking some config
files you can start up the VM and finish installing whatever else you
want with yum as well.

While I don't think that this should be the recommended install method
it might be worth mentioning and even giving a wiki page with some
instructions on how to do it this way.  Doing an install like this is
actually very good for a newbie because you "get your hands dirty" and
get a really good understanding of how yum works and the internals of
the distro.


Peter