User:Dusty/Debian template creation

(this is just a working area to make sure I've got my facts straight)

These are rough instructions of how to manually create basic Debian Etch (4.0) template cache, which can be used to create OpenVZ VEs based on Debian Etch (4.0).

Notes:

• You shouldn't be running as root, but as a user that is permitted to use sudo instead. It's a dangerous idea, run as root at your peril.
• Anywhere you see /vz, you might really need to use /var/lib/vz instead, especially on a Debian Etch host.
• Anywhere you see http://debian.osuosl.org/debian/, you can substitute your favorite Debian mirror. (List of official Debian Mirrors)

Prerequisites

You need to have a working copy of debootstrap running on your hardware node.

For Debian:

sudo apt-get install debootstrap

For Gentoo:

sudo emerge debootstrap

For other distros you might need to install it from sources, or search for an appropriate package for your distribution. An RPM is available on the OpenVZ Forum.

Bootstrapping Debian

Change to a directory where you'll have about 200MB of usable space and the ability to run executables. Depending on your configuration, /tmp might be set noexec which would mean you'd have to use some other location. I'm going to use /vz/private for this.

cd /vz/private

Download Debian Etch to a directory called "etch-temp":

sudo debootstrap etch etch-temp http://debian.osuosl.org/debian/

Or you can (but probably shouldn't need to) specify the architecture manually using one of these commands instead:

To specify i386/x86 architecture:

sudo debootstrap --arch i386 etch etch-temp http://debian.osuosl.org/debian/

For AMD64/x86_64, use amd64 instead of i386. For ia64, use ia64.

Inside the template

The following actions are all performed inside the template. To get inside, run this:

sudo chroot etch-temp

Set Debian repositories

cat <<EOF > /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://debian.osuosl.org/debian/ etch main contrib
deb http://security.debian.org etch/updates main contrib
EOF

Update and upgrade packages

This will update the available packages list, upgrade installed packages with security updates, and install the new packages that are listed below. Feel free to add your own.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Install more packages

Installing packages could be an interactive process so the system might ask some questions. You can install more packages if you'd like. For example:

apt-get install ssh quota

Set sane permissions for /root directory

chmod 700 /root

Disable root login

This will disable root login by default.

usermod -L root

Disable getty

Disable running gettys on terminals as a VE does not have any:

sed -i -e '/getty/d' /etc/inittab

Disable sync() for syslog

Turn off doing sync() on every write for syslog's log files, to improve I/O performance:

sed -i -e 's@\(space:\)\(/var/log/\)@\1-\2@' /etc/syslog.conf

Fix /etc/mtab

Link /etc/mtab to /proc/mounts, so df and friends will work:

rm -f /etc/mtab
ln -s /proc/mounts /etc/mtab

Remove some unneeded packages

If you have any packages you'd like to remove, now's the time for it. Here's an example:

dpkg --purge fortune-mod fortunes-min

Disable services

If there are any services you'd like to disable, do that now. Here's an example:

update-rc.d -f klogd remove

Fix SSH host keys

This is only useful if you installed SSH. Each individual VE should have its own pair of SSH host keys. The code below will wipe out the existing SSH keys and instruct the newly-created VE to create new SSH keys on first boot.

rm -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_*
cat << EOF > /etc/rc2.d/S15ssh_gen_host_keys
#!/bin/bash
ssh-keygen -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key -t rsa -N 
ssh-keygen -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key -t dsa -N 
rm -f \$0
EOF
chmod a+x /etc/rc2.d/S15ssh_gen_host_keys

Clean packages cache

After installing packages, you'll have some junk packages laying around in your cache. Since you don't want your template to have those, this command will wipe them out.

apt-get clean

Get out of the template

Now everything is done. Exit from the template and go back to the hardware node.

exit

Preparing for and packing template cache

Now create a cached OS tarball. In the command below, you'll want to replace i386 with your architecture (i386, amd64, ia64, etc).

cd etch-temp
sudo tar -zcf /vz/template/cache/debian-4.0-i386-basic.tar.gz .
cd ..

Check to make sure the filesize of the resulting tarball is sane:

# ls -lh /vz/template/cache
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  51M Apr 10 03:16 debian-4.0-i386-basic.tar.gz

Dispose of the temporary template directory

You're done with the template directory. Remove it.

sudo rm -Rf etch-temp 

Use your new template

We can now create a VE based on the just-created template cache. Be sure to change i386 to your architecture just like you did when you named the tarball above.

sudo vzctl create 123456 --ostemplate debian-4.0-i386-basic

Now make sure that it works:

sudo vzctl start 123456
sudo vzctl exec 123456 ps ax

You should see that a few processes are running as expected.

Final cleanup

Stop and remove the test VE you just created:

sudo vzctl stop 123456
sudo vzctl destroy 123456
sudo rm /etc/vz/conf/123456.conf.destroyed