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David Ellsworth - Mon, 2014/05/05 - 23:19
Does anyone have any experience getting TurnkeyLinux templates to work for OnApp + KVM? What is the process needed for this to happen?
Is it possible to have a Debian 7 install, and installing the TurnkeyLinux appliance on top of of it? Then with OnApp make templates for each appliance?
Forum:
TBH I'm not sure if it is possible (easily)
Theoretically you could configure a Debian server as an LXC or Docker host and use the TurnKey LXC/Docker images within it. The actual nuts and bolts of doing that though, I couldn't currently advise on...
You could install TKL somewhere and rsync it over the top of a Debian Wheezy/7 instance I guess, but not sure how great that would be (someone did that years ago and claimed that it worked great but never posted back any details on how it was done...)
Beyond that I'm not really sure how you would go about it. Unless of course you have access to the backend of it all (i.e. you are the host using OnApp). If that were the case then I imagine that it would be relatively easy... Let me know if that's how it is and I'll give you some pointers...
Yes we have access to the
Yes we have access to the backend. I tried downloading the Xen version of a template, changed it to a tar.gz and was not able to provision a VM with the template. I'm not exactly sure what is needed to turn a Xen image into KVM?
Cool! Easy then! :)
Don't use the Xen image, use the default VM image (VMDK). AFAIK as of version 0.12 KVM/Qemu supports VMDK natively so you should be able to run that OOTB.
Alternatively if you want a specific image format, qemu-img supports converting images from VMDK to raw or qcow2. E.g. convert a VMDK to a raw image like this:
For qcow2 just change the 'raw' to 'qcow2'...
Possibly the easiest way to get it all up and running is to provision a default Debian Wheezy VM, stop it and simply replace the image with the the TKL one. I have tested that on KVM (within Proxmox) and it works a treat! :)
The only thing that I would anticipate perhaps being an issue is that by default TKL images include LVM. How that will go in your hosting environment I am not quite sure... You might need to trial it and see what happens...
Also are you with a hosting company?
Or are you just running a private cloud?
If you are providing VPS/cloud to the public then perhaps you'd like to become a TurnKey Partner? We're always keen for new hosting partners! :)
More details are available here. And/or shoot me an email: Jeremy at turnkeylinux.org :)
Yes we a cloud IaaS business
Yes we a cloud IaaS business and have been trying to figure out how to get TurnkeyLinux templates to work on our OnApp KVM platform. The only "tutorial" we have from OnApp on how to make templates is here: https://onapp.zendesk.com/attachments/token/Vs4JwgkwhesBbN9ozfWcHYG8D/?n...
Not sure what the process would be for these TurnkeyLinux templates.
Hmmm...
I just had a look through that and TBH it doesn't seem like it's of much value in your instance. It's referring to Xen on a RHEL based system (e.g. CentOS etc). As you're using KVM and TurnKey is Debian based it doesn't seem quite relevant to me...
TBH I have had 'OnApp' on my "to contact" list for some time but have never quite got there... I'll raise the priority of that, but it probably won't be much help for you anytime soon... And I suspect that if they can't use any of our current images as they are, then it will probably be some time before we can get TurnKey on OnApp (nest year at a guess...).
If you can track down some instructions relating to custom KVM templates with OnApp then perhaps I could give you some further assistance with this.
Sorry I can't be more help. Also when you do get TurnKey running on your cloud either shoot us an email or fill in the Partnership registration form and we'll list you on our Partners page.
The template process should
The template process should be pretty similar to your Xen templates, minus/add a couple changes for OnApp. I wonder if there is a way to automate this TurnkeyLinux creation. 1 out of every 3 public IaaS Cloud services being created today, are based on the OnApp KVM/Xen platform.
We have plans to put the image creation scripts on GitHub
Currently TKLDev only supports output of ISOs, although there is a TKLPatch to create OVZ templates (not much use to you though...). There is a feature request for TKLDev to support non-ISO builds which we intend to fulfill.
Obviously we have the code to create the different image formats (that we currently support), although as it was (unfortunately) coded as part of our backend build process (prior to the development of TKLDev), it needs some tweaking. Primarily because it includes code and keys to upload images to our SourceForge account. Plus it also builds all the different formats, rather than just the specific one you want. Once we have the code cleaned up a bit we'll post it on GitHub.
As it takes the ISO and converts it to the relevant image format it is anticipated that users will have the option of building a complete appliance from source (using TKLDev) or just start from the ISO and convert it to the desired format. Having the code out in the open (on GitHub) will also allow provide a base/starting point for people to use to create new image formats that we don't currently support OOTB.
How can we help?
Doesn't OnApp support installation from ISO images?
Unfortunately, we don't have an OnApp installation on hand to test a new format so that complicates things a bit. If those interested could help us figure out what sort of build format / packaging works best with OnApp and other platforms then that would make it much easier for us to support in the next maintenance release.
I'll be happy to extract the scripts we use to convert the ISOs into the other formats if that will help. We're going to move them into TKLDev but perhaps we can make headway before that happens.
Feel free to email us
We're firstname AT turnkeylinux.org e.g. jeremy AT turnkeylinux.org or liraz AT turnkeylinux.org - or better still email as both! :)
And/or complete the Partnership registration.As for the build formats we currently provide/support, have a look here.
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