[Lxc-users] rant: Debian template

[Gordon Henderson]

On Tue, 21 Jun 2011, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:

> Hi
>
> Anybody actually uses the "Debian" template?
>
> I tried to figure out how I can pass a "suite" parameter to it, only to
> see that
>
> * The parameter is hardwired (to an obsolete value:
>  http://bugs.debian.org/600456 )
> * the script does not pass any custom argumets to the template
>  script, so I'm not encourged to make it a parameter.
>  Compare that to 'vserver build':
>  http://linux-vserver.org/Building_Guest_Systems
>
> If this bug is open for so long, I suspect most users don't really use
> those templates. Am I right? What do you use to set up a new Debian
> system?

I use Debian, but don't use templates of any kind - other than my own.

I did it "the hard way". At least I'm presuming it's the hard way because 
I couldn't find any sort of sensible automated way to do it, so sort of 
putting my own together.

It went roughly like this:

build a server with most stuff I want.

   mkdir -p /var/vservers/base/root (my chosen location - and /vservers is
 	on it's own partition)


Then I basically copy the entire system into this new 'root' (avoiding 
copying itself to itself, of-course). Things like:

   cd /
   find . -xdev | cpio -pm /var/vservers/base/root

and so on, for other paritions. rsync might be easier, but I've been 
typing that for a while.

Then go in & noodle the startup files.

Create a config file /var/vservers/base/{config,fstab}

And start it - make sure it's OK - delete old packages, install new. (e.g. 
asterisk :)

Shut it down.

Then that's base - which I then copy to create others...

   cp -a base server01

fixup configs and lxc-start it...

I don't actually care that it might take a while to create the inital base 
- 'cos once it's done, it's done and using it to create a new server is 
only a few minutes work. (which I've now automated on a per server basis 
anyway via a simple script to do the copy, rename, update config & fstab 
and off it goes)

I have several different types of 'base' depending on my needs and I have 
to say, I recently rebuilt my workstation and simply copied 2 different 
bases from different remote servers back to it to enable me to have my 
different types of virtual servers running on my workstation.

That works for me... I haven't yet tried to upgrade a base from Lenny to 
Squeeze, but I started from scratch and built a new Squeeze one recently.

Gordon