Revision 5 as of 2007-11-23 18:18:57

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UbuntuRelease: JeOS 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)

Introduction

This page is a work in progress which aims at documenting how to create virtual appliance using JeOS.

Initial setup

At this point in time, JeOS is meant to run under VMWare Server or WMWare ESX and may not work under other virtualization technologies yet. It is assumed in this tutorial that you have already installed a VMWare environment.

Download JeOS

The latest version of JeOS iso image can be downloaded from [http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/].

wget http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/7.10/release/ubuntu-7.10-jeos-i386.iso

It is always a good idea to verify the md5 sum of the downloaded file by comparing the content of [http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/7.10/release/MD5SUMS] with the result of

md5sum ubuntu-7.10-jeos-i386.iso

If the values are not the same, you should try to reload the file again.

Initial installation of JeOS

Installation of JeOS is done the same way you would install any other OS in VMWare, but here are a few thing to consider:

  • Please note that in order to reduce the size of JeOS to a minimum SCSI drivers have not been included in the JeOS kernel. Please make sure that you instruct VMWare to use IDE drive instead.

  • If you plan on shipping a virtual appliance, do not assume that the end-user will know how to extend disk size to fit their need, so either plan for a large virtual disk to allow for your appliance to grow, or explain fairly well in your documentation how to allocate more space.
  • Given that RAM is much easier to allocate in a VM, RAM size should be set to whatever you think is a safe minimum for your appliance.
  • LVM setup, even though it is proposed in the installer, does not work at this time, so if LVM is needed, it will have to be set-up later on.

Defining the VMWare machine

The following example is based on using VMWare server:

attachment:IDE.png

  1. Create a new virtual machine.
  2. Click next.

  3. Select Custom configuration, click next.

  4. Select Linux, pick Ubuntu in the version drop down menu, click next.

  5. Pick a name for your virtual appliance (use something that makes sense for your product), click next.
  6. Pick one processor (always default to the lowest configuration you think your users may have), click next.
  7. Letting the machine be private is a good secure basis, click next.
  8. Pick the minimum RAM you think your appliance will need (this can be changed easily by the user later on). Click next.
  9. Bridged networking might seem a sensible default to simplify user set-up later on, click next.

  10. Do not use default SCSI at this point, use IDE, as SCSI drivers are not included in the kernel (see screenshot on the right). Click next.

  11. Pick a disk size that makes sense for your virtual appliance. A minimum of 8G seems reasonable, particularly if you do not pick allocate disk space now. Split the disk into 2Gb files makes sense if you want to allow storage on FAT volumes. Click next.

  12. Pick where you want to store the disk image, click Finish.

CategoryDocumentation