Here you can find OpenVZ Live CD images. Live CD is a great way to test drive the OpenVZ technology without a need to actually install it on your machine.
We offer three live CDs at the moment. The first one is based on Knoppix 5.1.1, the second one is based on CentOS 4.4, and the third one is the "official" Openwall GNU/*/Linux (or Owl) CD (live & installable).
Contents
Download
The precreated ISO images for Knoppix and CentOS are available directly from download.openvz.org/livecd/ or any of the download mirrors. The ISO images for Owl are available from the Openwall FTP mirrors, such as via the links below (which use a specific fast mirror).
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Note: the .md5, .asc, and .mtree* files below do not need to be copied to the CD-R; they are here to check the authenticity of the iso files. This page has some info on this topic. |
CentOS
| File | Size |
|---|---|
| CentOS-4.4-OpenVZ-i386-LiveCD.iso | 684 MB |
| CentOS-4.4-OpenVZ-i386-LiveCD.iso.md5 | 68 B |
Knoppix
| File | Size |
|---|---|
| KNOPPIX_V5.1.1-OPENVZ-CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso | 683 MB |
| KNOPPIX_V5.1.1-OPENVZ-CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso.md5 | 77 B |
| KNOPPIX_V5.1.1-OPENVZ-CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso.asc | 189 B |
Owl
Burning
After downloading the image, you have to burn it to the actual media, i.e. a CD-R or CD-RW disk. The process depends on the actual OS and CD burning software that you have, and the exact details are out of scope of this article.
If you don't know how to burn the ISO image to CD-R, try this document. 'Bold text'Bold text'
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Booting
Just insert the fresh CD into your CD-ROM and reboot. In some cases you have to modify your BIOS settings in order to enable booting from a CD. If you use CentOS-based CD you'll be able to choose the kernel to boot: ovz9rh, ovz18, ovz18rh, ovz20 or linux (original CentOS kernel).
Using
With the Knoppix (and CentOS?) CDs, upon successful boot, a browser window with some helpful hints will appear to help you start using OpenVZ. The latest version of that document is also available on this wiki: Getting started with OpenVZ live CD.
With the Owl CD, brief instructions (not OpenVZ specific yet) will be printed to the console, right before dropping you to a shell prompt. Then you will need to proceed with instructions for getting started with OpenVZ on Owl, as found on the Openwall wiki.
Limitations
Since this is a live CD, everything is created in RAM, i.e. is not persistent. If you will create a number of VEs, they will not be available after the reboot.
A number of VEs that you can create using this live CD greatly depends on the amount of RAM your machine has, since the system uses RAM instead of a hard disk. On a 1 gigabyte RAM machine you can create about 5 VEs. To work around this, you have to have a disk partition mounted to /vz/private/ for CentOS-based CD and to /var/lib/vz/private for KNOPPIX-based CD.
OpenVZ disk quota does not work on LiveCD at the moment due to OpenVZ Bug #558, so df in VE shows ludicrous values if quota is on.
Because of it on CentOS 4.4 LiveCD disk quota is switched off by default.
Checkpointing (and consequently live migration) doesn't work on KNOPPIX LiveCD at the moment due to OpenVZ Bug #606. You can work around it by mounting some filesystem (ext2, ext3, tmpfs) to /var/lib/vz/private directory. On CentOS-based LiveCD tmpfs is mounted on this directory automatically during the booting.
CD contents
CentOS CD contents
This CD is based on CentOS 4.4 Live CD and contains the following OpenVZ packages:
- kernels:
- original CentOS 4.4 kernel without virtualization (2.6.9-42.livecd.c4)
- 2.6.9-023stab044.4
- 2.6.18-028stab035
- 2.6.18-028stab035-rhel5
- 2.6.20-ovz007.1
- tools:
- vzctl 3.0.18
- vzquota 3.0.9
- template tools:
- vzyum-2.4.0-11
- vzrpm44-4.4.1-22.5
- vzrpm43-4.3.3-7
- vzpkg-2.7.0-18
- template metadatas:
- vztmpl-centos-4-2.0-2
- vztmpl-fedora-core-3-2.0-2
- vztmpl-fedora-core-4-2.0-2
- vztmpl-fedora-core-5-2.0-2
- precreated templates:
- centos-4-i386-minimal
- fedora-core-5-i386-minimal
- debian-3.1-i386-minimal
A number of original CentOS packages were removed (openoffice, gimp, etc.) in order to free disk space for OpenVZ packages and templates.
Knoppix CD contents
This CD contains the following OpenVZ packages:
- kernel 2.6.18-028stab027
- vzctl 3.0.16
- vzquota 3.0.9
plus a number of precreated templates:
- Debian 3.1 minimal
- CentOS 4 minimal
- Fedora Core 5 minimal
It also contains all the software from the original Knoppix 5.1.1 CD, excluding:
- OpenOffice
- GIMP
- Frozen Bubble
The above packages were taken out to make some room for OpenVZ packages.
Owl CD contents
This CD uses the following OpenVZ components:
- kernel 2.6.18-128.2.1.el5.028stab064.8 (from OpenVZ's "rhel5" branch, with very minor changes for Owl)
- vzctl 3.0.23 (with minor enhancements and customizations by ALT Linux and Owl teams)
- vzquota 3.0.12
The live system is a full install of the Owl userland, including networking clients, servers, as well as "development" tools and libraries (C, C++). It also includes installable packages, the installer program, full source code, and the build environment. Unfortunately, it does not include pre-created container templates, but you may either configure networking (with "setup") and download a pre-created template to RAM, or you may use "make vztemplate" to create a new template of the Owl userland right on the CD-booted system.
Changelog
- 7 May 2007, initial version based on Knoppix 5.1.1
- 5 July 2007, version based on CentOS 4.4
- 29 January 2010, added Owl
External links
- knoppix.com, the home of Knoppix distribution
- centos.org, the home of CentOS distribution
- openwall.com, the home of Openwall GNU/*/Linux (or Owl)