Re: [Xen-users] Fedora based Xen Live CD

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 02:23:04PM +0200, Dario Faggioli wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> So, in the past weeks, as a pet project, I tried to put together a
> Fedora based Xen LiveCD. Of course, I took advantage of kickstart, the
> Fedora spins 'framework' [1], etc.
> Actually, that is exactly what I ended up creating: a kickstart file for
> a Fedora spin. It's not an official spin yet, just something I
> personally maintain (so, if you like, a Remix [2], although one with
> 100% Fedora software)... but perhaps I can go ahead and propose it as an
> official spin, if the idea reveals popular enough. :-) [3]
> 
> Here it comes how to give it a try. The kickstart file is attached to
> this message, and the latest version of it will always be available
> here:
> 
>  git://xenbits.xen.org/people/dariof/fedora-live-xen.git
>  http://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb/?p=people/dariof/fedora-live-xen.git;a=summary
> 
> Once downloaded it, make sure you have the spin-kickstarts and
> livecd-tools packages. Creating the ISO is (on a Fedora system, of
> course!) as easy as running (as root) the following commands (full
> instructions here [4]):
> # cd /usr/share/spin-kickstarts
> # livecd-creator --verbose \
>     --config=<path_to_downloaded_ks_file>/fedora-live-xen.ks \
>     --fslabel=Fedora-Xen \
>     --cache=/var/cache/live
> 
> Notice that the `livecd-creator' command accepts a
> "--releasever=RELEASEVER" argument, in case one wants to create a live
> image of a specific version of Fedora.
> 
> 
> At the time of writing this email, there isn't any ISO uploaded
> anywhere, as doing so, completely starves my poor little residential
> ADSL! :-/ Anyway, I'm going to upload it as soon as possible, and I'll
> send the link as a reply to this message... sorry for the
> inconvenience! :-P
> 
> Once you have the ISO, it should be easy enough to get to create a
> bootable USB stick (look at [5]).
> 
> Et voila`, you have a Fedora based Dom0 on your CD or USB stick, ready
> to be used, for example, for testing Xen on all your boxes, without
> actually having to install it! You just boot the live image as usual,
> and the hypervisor and Dom0 environemnt is what will be started by
> default. It also comes with libvirt (with the libxl driver),
> virt-manager, virt-viewer, and all these stuff. :-)
> 
> The Xen and Dom0 kernel version used are the ones available in the
> Fedora packages for the chosen distro, i.e., Xen 4.3.x on Fedora 20.
> I'm already including the updates-testing and virt-preview repositories,
> and packages are fetched from there during the live CD creation, so you
> really should get software as updated as available.
> 
> It's probably not too hard to include rawhide packages at least for Xen
> (which, at the moment would mean Xen 4.4), and I'm already trying to
> enable that. A little bit more tricky would be to use something coming
> from a personal build of the hypervisor (and toolstack, of course). The
> problem is both automating the build inside of the kickstart file (but
> that is certainly doable) and dealing with dependencies (as in, if you
> build and install Xen from source, `yum install
> libvirt-daemon-driver-libxl may complain). Anyway, if this is something
> interesting, we can certainly try to make it happen. :-)
> 
> Of course, once inside the live session, it is possible to invoke the
> official Fedora installer and install the distro. That path, however, is
> not highly tested with this LiveCD image yet.
> 
> So, we're done I guess. Please, if interested, send me your comments,
> suggestions, bugfixes, contributions of any kind, etc... let's improve
> this
> together! :-)

Woot! Thank you for making this happen. This should help quite a lot
when it comes to testing the latest and greatest with different hardware!

And also to showcase virtualization - just run it, have an dd image
of some OS, boot it. And .. there we go.

Thank you again!
> 
> Thanks and Reegards,
> Dario
> 
> [1] For those unfamiliar with Fedora spins, they're basically
> alternative versions of Fedora, tailored for various types of users via
> hand-picked application sets or customizations. See:   
>   http://spins.fedoraproject.org/
>   http://spins.fedoraproject.org/about
> 
> [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Remix
> 
> [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Spins_Process
> 
> [4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_a_Live_CD
> 
> [5] 
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB?rd=FedoraLiveCD/USBHowTo
> 
> 
> -- 
> <<This happens because I choose it to happen!>> (Raistlin Majere)
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Dario Faggioli, Ph.D, http://about.me/dario.faggioli
> Senior Software Engineer, Citrix Systems R&D Ltd., Cambridge (UK)
> 





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