Fedora Base Install

[Vijay Kumar]

Hi everyone,
for the FOSS Lab Manual, we need to prepare a disk image that contains
only the bare minimum packages to boot up a Fedora system (without a
GUI). In Debian we call this a base install. We just don't select
additional packages after the base system is installed. Any ideas how
this can be done in Fedora?

Regards,
Vijay

[Arun SAG]

In fedora you can use livecd-creator to do that.  Install livecd-tools and spin-kickstarts. Use fedora-live-base.ks that has base configuration

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLiveCD/LiveCDHowTo#How_the_livecd-creator_Works

--
Arun S.A.G
http://zer0c00l.in/

[Vijay Kumar]

On Tuesday 07 June 2011 08:00 AM, Arun SAG wrote:
> In fedora you can use livecd-creator to do that. Install livecd-tools
> and spin-kickstarts. Use fedora-live-base.ks that has base configuration
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLiveCD/LiveCDHowTo#How_the_livecd-creator_Works

Thanks for the info Arun. Any chances you can get this done for us?
The plan is to use a minimal Fedora guest (inside Qemu) for package
management, kernel compilation, compilation from source, ...

Regards,
Vijay

[Baskar Selvaraj]

Not to forget that, things will get more complicated when all the above being done inside QEMU.

Regards

S. Baskar

[Shakthi Kannan]

Hi,

--- On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 9:23 AM, Baskar Selvaraj <bas...@linuxpert.in> wrote:
| Not to forget that, things will get more complicated when all the above
| being done inside QEMU.

\--

Why? People today deploy services on VMs.

SK

--
Shakthi Kannan
http://www.shakthimaan.com

[Arun SAG]

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 8:14 AM, Vijay Kumar <vijay...@bravegnu.org> wrote:

>Thanks for the info Arun. Any chances you can get this done for us?
>The plan is to use a minimal Fedora guest (inside Qemu) for package
>management, kernel compilation, compilation from source, ...

Sure vijay, I will roll out a build before this weekend. Is it ok if it is a minmal live cd? Live CD can be installed in a virtual filesystem (used by qemu) , and that file system image can be distributed across colleges. Is it the plan? Or are we doing something different?

[Vijay Kumar]

Arun SAG wrote:
> Sure vijay, I will roll out a build before this weekend. Is it ok if it
> is a minmal live cd? Live CD can be installed in a virtual filesystem
> (used by qemu) , and that file system image can be distributed across
> colleges. Is it the plan?

Yes.

Regards,
Vijay

[Vijay Kumar]

Baskar Selvaraj wrote:
> Not to forget that, things will get more complicated when all the above
> being done inside QEMU.

Installing kernels and packages on to lab systems and leaving them in
broken and unusable states, is something we would like to avoid. This
is important in the long run. BTW, using simulated environments is a
common affair in engineering.

On a positive note, they get to see the practical advantages of
Virtualization, right in their lab itself. :-)

Regards,
Vijay

[Baskar Selvaraj]

Installing kernels and packages on to lab systems and leaving them in
broken and unusable states, is something we would like to avoid.

As we have setup FOSS labs in more than 45 engg. colleges so far, the maximum space allocated for linux OS is between 30 - 50 GB (due to dual OS installation) and in many colleges the workspace required for doing practicals is very limited.  In this scenario, I don't think it's possible to implement VM which requires more additional space.
 

This
is important in the long run. BTW, using simulated environments is a
common affair in engineering.

Another real problem in colleges is in setting up the network between Host/Guest OS.
 

On a positive note, they get to see the practical advantages of
Virtualization, right in their lab itself. :-)

Agreed, they understand the importance / use of virtualization.  Apart from Virtualization, there are already too many topics to be covered in the syllabus, doing more exercises inside VM will finally make them feel irritating and get scared.

Just my thoughts.

Regards

S. Baskar

[Vijay Kumar]

Baskar Selvaraj wrote:
> As we have setup FOSS labs in more than 45 engg. colleges so far, the
> maximum space allocated for linux OS is between 30 - 50 GB (due to dual
> OS installation) and in many colleges the workspace required for doing
> practicals is very limited. In this scenario, I don't think it's
> possible to implement VM which requires more additional space.

A debian base install requires about 500MB. With 30 - 50GB of disk space
this shouldn't be a problem.

> Another real problem in colleges is in setting up the network between
> Host/Guest OS.

Qemu's usermode networking works out of the box. No configurations in
the host and no options need to be passed to qemu.

Regards,
Vijay

[Arun SAG]

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 8:14 AM, Vijay Kumar <vijay...@bravegnu.org> wrote:

>Thanks for the info Arun. Any chances you can get this done for us?
>The plan is to use a minimal Fedora guest (inside Qemu) for package
>management, kernel compilation, compilation from source, ...

Yesterday i rolled out a build. By default it boots into runlevel 3.

It includes additional packages like
   autoconf
   automake
   binutils
   bison
   flex
   gcc
   gcc-c++
   gdb
   gettext
   libtool
   make
   pkgconfig
   redhat-rpm-config
   rpm-build
   strace
   automake14
   automake15
   automake16
   automake17
   byacc
   ccache
   cscope
   ctags
   cvs
   diffstat
   doxygen
   elfutils
   gcc-gfortran
   git
   indent
   intltool
   ltrace
   oprofile
   oprofile-gui
   patchutils
   python-ldap
   rcs
   subversion
   swig
   sysprof
   systemtap
   texinfo
   valgrind
 
lighttpd
rcs
cvs
subversion
fuse-devel
createrepo
mysql-server
MySQL-python
python
ipython
perl
@hardware-support - Some drivers

If you want me to include anything else please let me know. The kickstart file can be downloaded from http://zer0c00l.in/downloads/fedora-aos.ks .

The total size of the ISO file is 272 MB. I will upload the ISO once everything is finalized. When booted the iso using qemu, It requires the network interface to be configured using 'dhclient eth0' command.

[Vijay Kumar]

Arun SAG wrote:
> Yesterday i rolled out a build. By default it boots into runlevel 3.

Excellent work Arun.

> It includes additional packages like
> autoconf

[clip]

>
> If you want me to include anything else please let me know. The
> kickstart file can be downloaded from
> http://zer0c00l.in/downloads/fedora-aos.ks .

Arun, to keep the ISO as small as possible, I would suggest that we
include the bare minimum packages (the ones required to boot the
system) alone in the ISO. Once the system is installed on to the
hard-disk image the rest of packages can anyway be installed using
yum, right?

I will get the ISO from you, this weekend, at the ILUGC meet.

Regards,
Vijay

[Arun SAG]

vijay,

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Vijay Kumar <vijay...@bravegnu.org> wrote:

>I will get the ISO from you, this weekend, at the ILUGC meet.

Anaconda (the installer) seems to be crashing could you please feed in the following kickstart file while starting anaconda.

Please copy and paste the following information in a file before starting anaconda in qemu,  start anaconda by 'liveinst --kickstart /path/to/kickstartfile.ks'

---

lang C
keyboard us
timezone US/Eastern
auth --useshadow --enablemd5
selinux --disabled
firewall --disabled
#By default we just bump into runlevel 3
bootloader --timeout=1 --append="acpi=force 3"
services --enabled=network

%packages --excludedocs --nobase
@core

#
#Fonts, metacity and base-x are needed for anaconda
#Anaconda does not support text based installation as of now
#

@Fonts
@base-x
-desktop-backgrounds-basic
-firstboot
metacity
bash
kernel
grub
e2fsprogs
passwd
chkconfig
openssh
openssh-server
rootfiles
yum
vim-minimal
acpid



I am working on a fix. Thanks

[Arun SAG]

Hi Vijay,

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 7:59 AM, Arun SAG <sag...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I am working on a fix. Thanks

I have fixed the problem. Please use this build http://zer0c00l.in/downloads/foss_lab_os/foss_lab_livecd_beta2.iso

Also please go through the kickstart file http://zer0c00l.in/downloads/foss_lab_os/fedora-aos_back.ks and let me know if i am missing any packages.

sha1sum http://zer0c00l.in/downloads/foss_lab_os/checksum.txt

Thanks.

[Vijay Kumar]

On Tuesday 14 June 2011 09:34 AM, Arun SAG wrote:
> I have fixed the problem. Please use this build
> http://zer0c00l.in/downloads/foss_lab_os/foss_lab_livecd_beta2.iso

Do we run liveinst under X or in the Virtual Terminal?

Regards,
Vijay

[Arun SAG]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 10:48 PM, Vijay Kumar <vijay...@bravegnu.org> wrote:

>Do we run liveinst under X or in the Virtual Terminal?

If you invoke liveinst, It will automatically start the X.