imagetools

Tools for creating SmartOS images.

Creating seed images

Seed images are the absolute baseline of a SmartOS image. They are created from files produced by a smartos-live build, containing the original /etc, /var and SMF manifest database.

First, you need to perform a smartos-live build, as described in the wiki page:

http://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/Building+SmartOS+on+SmartOS

Then from the global zone:

$ ./create-seed /path/to/smartos-live seed-image

This will create a zones/seed-image file system containing the seed files.

To create a SNGL seed, you will then need to extract a bootstrap tarball over the top to populate enough of /usr for the zone to boot. I tend to use our pbulk pkgsrc bootstrap for this, for example:

$ ./create-seed /path/to/smartos-live seed-sngl
$ gtar -zxf /path/to/bootstrap-2013Q2-sngl.tar.gz -C /zones/seed-sngl/root/

Once you have a seed file system ready, use create-image to turn it into a provisionable image and manifest.

$ ./create-image seed-1.0 seed-image
Enter description: Seed Image
Enter homepage: http://wiki.joyent.com/jpc2/SmartMachine+Base

This will use /zones/seed-image, snapshot it, and create a file system image along with a manifest file ready for importing with imgadm. Give it a useful description and homepage pointing to a description when prompted.

Once complete it will output an imgadm command you can use, e.g.

Done.  Now run this to install the image:

  imgadm install -m ./output/seed-1.0.json -f ./output/seed-1.0.zfs.gz

You can then use the UUID as input for the next phase.

Creating base images

Base images are comprised of a baseline seed image, plus an applied overlay appropriate for the target image. You use the install-image tool to copy the overlay files into a specified zone and then execute the customize script.

So, again using the 2013Q2-sngl image as an example, start by creating a basic zone based on the seed image created above (replacing image_uuid with the uuid of the seed image):

$ vmadm create <<EOF
{
  "brand": "sngl",
  "image_uuid": "05d41bca-03f8-11e3-9064-c359e89c4139",
  "max_physical_memory": 512,
  "nics": [
    {
      "nic_tag": "admin",
      "ip": "dhcp"
    }
  ]
}
EOF
Successfully created VM c374c4bc-2395-4848-b28d-0c18937e7775

Then we can apply the 2013Q2-sngl configuration to the VM with:

$ ./install-base -c 2013Q2-sngl -r 13.2.0 -z c374c4bc-2395-4848-b28d-0c18937e7775

This uses the 2013Q2-sngl configuration, sets the version number to 13.2.0 and installs to the specified zone.

The final part of this script runs sm-prepare-image which does some final image cleanup and shutdown, after which you can simply generate the finished image, again with create-image:

$ ./create-image sngl-13.2.0 c374c4bc-2395-4848-b28d-0c18937e7775
Enter description: A multiarch SmartOS image utilising a GNU/Linux layout.
Enter homepage: http://wiki.joyent.com/jpc2/SmartMachine+Base

This final image and manifest should now be suitable for production use.