Hello,
So, in the past weeks, as a pet project, I tried to put together a Fedora based Xen LiveCD. Of course, I took advantage of kickstart, the Fedora spins 'framework' [1], etc. Actually, that is exactly what I ended up creating: a kickstart file for a Fedora spin. It's not an official spin yet, just something I personally maintain (so, if you like, a Remix [2], although one with 100% Fedora software)... but perhaps I can go ahead and propose it as an official spin, if the idea reveals popular enough. :-) [3]
Here it comes how to give it a try. The kickstart file is attached to this message, and the latest version of it will always be available here:
git://xenbits.xen.org/people/dariof/fedora-live-xen.git http://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb/?p=people/dariof/fedora-live-xen.git;a=summary
Once downloaded it, make sure you have the spin-kickstarts and livecd-tools packages. Creating the ISO is (on a Fedora system, of course!) as easy as running (as root) the following commands (full instructions here [4]): # cd /usr/share/spin-kickstarts # livecd-creator --verbose \ --config=<path_to_downloaded_ks_file>/fedora-live-xen.ks \ --fslabel=Fedora-Xen \ --cache=/var/cache/live
Notice that the `livecd-creator' command accepts a "--releasever=RELEASEVER" argument, in case one wants to create a live image of a specific version of Fedora.
At the time of writing this email, there isn't any ISO uploaded anywhere, as doing so, completely starves my poor little residential ADSL! :-/ Anyway, I'm going to upload it as soon as possible, and I'll send the link as a reply to this message... sorry for the inconvenience! :-P
Once you have the ISO, it should be easy enough to get to create a bootable USB stick (look at [5]).
Et voila`, you have a Fedora based Dom0 on your CD or USB stick, ready to be used, for example, for testing Xen on all your boxes, without actually having to install it! You just boot the live image as usual, and the hypervisor and Dom0 environemnt is what will be started by default. It also comes with libvirt (with the libxl driver), virt-manager, virt-viewer, and all these stuff. :-)
The Xen and Dom0 kernel version used are the ones available in the Fedora packages for the chosen distro, i.e., Xen 4.3.x on Fedora 20. I'm already including the updates-testing and virt-preview repositories, and packages are fetched from there during the live CD creation, so you really should get software as updated as available.
It's probably not too hard to include rawhide packages at least for Xen (which, at the moment would mean Xen 4.4), and I'm already trying to enable that. A little bit more tricky would be to use something coming from a personal build of the hypervisor (and toolstack, of course). The problem is both automating the build inside of the kickstart file (but that is certainly doable) and dealing with dependencies (as in, if you build and install Xen from source, `yum install libvirt-daemon-driver-libxl may complain). Anyway, if this is something interesting, we can certainly try to make it happen. :-)
Of course, once inside the live session, it is possible to invoke the official Fedora installer and install the distro. That path, however, is not highly tested with this LiveCD image yet.
So, we're done I guess. Please, if interested, send me your comments, suggestions, bugfixes, contributions of any kind, etc... let's improve this together! :-)
Thanks and Reegards, Dario
[1] For those unfamiliar with Fedora spins, they're basically alternative versions of Fedora, tailored for various types of users via hand-picked application sets or customizations. See: http://spins.fedoraproject.org/ http://spins.fedoraproject.org/about
[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Remix
[3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Spins_Process
[4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_a_Live_CD
[5] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB?rd=FedoraLiveC...
On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 02:23:04PM +0200, Dario Faggioli wrote:
Hello,
So, in the past weeks, as a pet project, I tried to put together a Fedora based Xen LiveCD. Of course, I took advantage of kickstart, the Fedora spins 'framework' [1], etc. Actually, that is exactly what I ended up creating: a kickstart file for a Fedora spin. It's not an official spin yet, just something I personally maintain (so, if you like, a Remix [2], although one with 100% Fedora software)... but perhaps I can go ahead and propose it as an official spin, if the idea reveals popular enough. :-) [3]
Here it comes how to give it a try. The kickstart file is attached to this message, and the latest version of it will always be available here:
git://xenbits.xen.org/people/dariof/fedora-live-xen.git http://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb/?p=people/dariof/fedora-live-xen.git;a=summary
Once downloaded it, make sure you have the spin-kickstarts and livecd-tools packages. Creating the ISO is (on a Fedora system, of course!) as easy as running (as root) the following commands (full instructions here [4]): # cd /usr/share/spin-kickstarts # livecd-creator --verbose \ --config=<path_to_downloaded_ks_file>/fedora-live-xen.ks \ --fslabel=Fedora-Xen \ --cache=/var/cache/live
Notice that the `livecd-creator' command accepts a "--releasever=RELEASEVER" argument, in case one wants to create a live image of a specific version of Fedora.
At the time of writing this email, there isn't any ISO uploaded anywhere, as doing so, completely starves my poor little residential ADSL! :-/ Anyway, I'm going to upload it as soon as possible, and I'll send the link as a reply to this message... sorry for the inconvenience! :-P
Once you have the ISO, it should be easy enough to get to create a bootable USB stick (look at [5]).
Et voila`, you have a Fedora based Dom0 on your CD or USB stick, ready to be used, for example, for testing Xen on all your boxes, without actually having to install it! You just boot the live image as usual, and the hypervisor and Dom0 environemnt is what will be started by default. It also comes with libvirt (with the libxl driver), virt-manager, virt-viewer, and all these stuff. :-)
The Xen and Dom0 kernel version used are the ones available in the Fedora packages for the chosen distro, i.e., Xen 4.3.x on Fedora 20. I'm already including the updates-testing and virt-preview repositories, and packages are fetched from there during the live CD creation, so you really should get software as updated as available.
It's probably not too hard to include rawhide packages at least for Xen (which, at the moment would mean Xen 4.4), and I'm already trying to enable that. A little bit more tricky would be to use something coming from a personal build of the hypervisor (and toolstack, of course). The problem is both automating the build inside of the kickstart file (but that is certainly doable) and dealing with dependencies (as in, if you build and install Xen from source, `yum install libvirt-daemon-driver-libxl may complain). Anyway, if this is something interesting, we can certainly try to make it happen. :-)
Of course, once inside the live session, it is possible to invoke the official Fedora installer and install the distro. That path, however, is not highly tested with this LiveCD image yet.
So, we're done I guess. Please, if interested, send me your comments, suggestions, bugfixes, contributions of any kind, etc... let's improve this together! :-)
Woot! Thank you for making this happen. This should help quite a lot when it comes to testing the latest and greatest with different hardware!
And also to showcase virtualization - just run it, have an dd image of some OS, boot it. And .. there we go.
Thank you again!
Thanks and Reegards, Dario
[1] For those unfamiliar with Fedora spins, they're basically alternative versions of Fedora, tailored for various types of users via hand-picked application sets or customizations. See: http://spins.fedoraproject.org/ http://spins.fedoraproject.org/about
[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Remix
[3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Spins_Process
[4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_a_Live_CD
[5] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB?rd=FedoraLiveC...
--
<<This happens because I choose it to happen!>> (Raistlin Majere)
Dario Faggioli, Ph.D, http://about.me/dario.faggioli Senior Software Engineer, Citrix Systems R&D Ltd., Cambridge (UK)
xen@lists.stg.fedoraproject.org
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Dario Faggioli -
Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk