Download/live CD

Here you can find OpenVZ Live CD images. We have to LiveCDs at the moment. The first one is based on Knoppix 5.1.1 and the second one is based on Centos 4.4. Live CD is a great way to test drive the OpenVZ technology without a need to actually install it on your machine.

Centos LiveCD contents

This CD contains the following OpenVZ packages:

• kernels:
  • original CentOS 4.4 kernel without virtualization
  • 2.6.9-023stab044.4
  • 2.6.18-028stab035
  • 2.6.18-028stab035-rhel5
• vzctl 3.0.16
• 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
• several precreated templates:
  • centos-4-i386-minimal
  • fedora-core-5-i386-minimal
  • debian-3.1-i386-minimal

The number of original CentOS packages were removed (openoffice, gimp, etc.) to free space for OpenVZ packages.

Knoppix LiveCD contents

This CD contains the following OpenVZ packages:

• kernel 2.6.18-028stab027
• vzctl 3.0.16
• vzquota 3.0.9

plus the 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.

Downloading

The precreated ISO image is available directly from download.openvz.org/livecd/ or any of the download mirrors.

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

Note that .md5 and .asc files does not need to be copied to the CD-R; they are here to check the authentity of the iso file. Package_signatures#Checking_files has some info on this topic.

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.

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-base CD you'll be able to choose the kernel to boot: ovz9rh, ovz18, ovz18rh, ovz20, linux (original CentOS kernel).

Using

Upon the successful boot, a browser window with some helful 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.

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 /var/lib/vz.

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. But it works on CentOS-based LiveCD!

Changelog

• 7 May 2007, initial version based on Knoppix 5.1.1
• 5 July 2007, second version based on Centos 4.4

External links

• knoppix.com, the home of Knoppix distribution
• centos.org, the home of CentOS distribution