Preparing Minimal Images with Debootstrap

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Debootstrap gives us a simple and consistent way to cleanly setup machines by installing packages directly into a file system directly from the repos. These have the flexibility of being used across many different kind of machines.

Create Directory Structure

Here we are just creating the directories into which we will be installing the operating systems into.

 bash
 
 
mkdir -p /mnt/build/amd64 /mnt/build/i386
cd /mnt/build/amd64; mkdir ubuntu_10.04 ubuntu_10.10 ubuntu_11.04 ubuntu_11.10 debian_5 debian_6
cd /mnt/build/i386; mkdir ubuntu_10.04 ubuntu_10.10 ubuntu_11.04 ubuntu_11.10 debian_5 debian_6

Install Required Software

bash

apt-get install debootstrap

Install Operating Systems into the Folders

Ubuntu Lucid

KVM Guests: Using Virt-Install to Install Debian and Ubuntu Guests

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I like to be able to spin up a VM without looking for CD media so for a while now I have been using ISO images for all of my installs directly, however I found my self scurrying around “digitally” looking for the correct iso in much the same way I used to scurry about looking for physical CDs, except I was not physically moving. So anyways the time was wasted either way, I figured it is time that I find a better (read: lazier) way to do this. So the idea is that since the apt package manager contains all the packages and files needed to install and upgrade a system, we ought to be able to find a way to initiate the install over the wire.

Debootstrap on the bin

Preparing Minimal Images with Debootstrap

Create Directory Structure

Install Required Software

Install Operating Systems into the Folders

KVM Guests: Using Virt-Install to Install Debian and Ubuntu Guests