Re: Custom minimalist build
On Wed, 15 Jun 2005, Andy Smith wrote:
On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 11:48:17AM -0500, Matthew J. Harmon wrote:
I'm building a series of Xen (xensource.com) virtualized servers to
compartmentalize applications such as Apache, PostgreSQL, etc. and I would
like to provide each a custom build with only the necessary libraries.
So far I haven't found a way to do this easilly, I'd like to be as
minimalist as possible with Debian (Xen's primary distribution is Debian),
any recommendations?
Ah I just answered this on the Xen list without realising you were
using Debian.
* Thanks for the response here also, as I was trying to make sure I didn't
CC:/BCC: cross-post
I can recommend running debootstrap in dom0 to download the minimal
configuration. Then you edit a few of the config files there, and
tar it up to use as a template for future guests.
* So far I have been using debootstrap, however I'm finding that there are
a lot of somewhat unnecessary libraries that are installed by default
installs. Although I am sure it is not recommended, what would be possible
for removing libraries that are not regularly used?
If you use the same filesystems then you will only need one kernel
that can beused for all of them; if some have special kernel needs
then maybe they can be done as modules.
* My kernel so far is all static modules (make-kpkg puked on that). I am
considering putting all of this on a Read Only .fs, however not fully
familar with the COW (copy-on-write) process yet.
Setting up something like an apt-proxy is useful since after you've
booted with the template install you will want to apt-get a few
things that are not necessarily needed in every guest. For example,
any guest that I am going to be spending a fair amount of time
editing files in I will want to install vim, but for those where I
don't edit much I will leave it with vi.
* I'll play with apt-proxy tonight, thanks for the heads up.
Here is a page of some of my experiences:
http://wiki.blitzed.org/User:grifferz/Xen
* Looks very nice, I'll provide you some responses as I go through this.
-Matthew
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