Virtual Appliance and Server .ISO distro

[SmokinJoe]

Looking for someone who has done a minimal OS and virtual appliance. Seems that it takes a long time to install a general purpose Linux OS and there are several Linux issues to look out for.

The minimal server OS should be something that is light and can install fast. For example IPCop. I can take a machine from power up to a functional IPCop firewall in less than 6 minutes. 175 meg of disk space and 38 megs of RAM in use.

We need to know what packages are required for VMWare server...

[bac]

We need to know what packages are required for VMWare

server...

I may be misunderstanding, but I don't see why you need to know what packages are required for VMware Server in order to build a good appliance VM. To build an appliance all you need to worry about is what goes inside the VM. For VMware Server the only thing that matters is what is installed on the host[/i], but that should not affect the VM in any way.

If you're just wondering how small a host OS you can get away with having, that's a fair question too. Just wanted to clarify that it has no bearing on this contest.

[SmokinJoe]

I want to run Linux for the HOST os, not Windows.

If IPCop can take up just 40 meg on a CD tehn I think someone should be able to make a quick version of something that prompts you to put a CD in that has the VMWare server to install.

[RDPetruska]

To reiterate Ben's point again,

This is a good question, but does not appear to be the right forum. What does your question about what the host requires have to do with building your guest virtual appliance for the contest??

[Dallas · Accepted solution]

I have done what you are looking for...total iso is about 350 megs based on redhat 9. When it is burned to a cd you can then boot it up and have a working VM in about 10 minutes. After you enter your license number anyway. This is on a test machine that is a P-3 550 w/ 512 megs of ram & will only support one small VM "a firewall".

The min for VMware is listed somewhere on this site, I would hope anyway. I simply started to install it and worked through the errors as they came.

[SmokinJoe]

Dallas,

That rocks! You da man!

I will have to try it tomorrow! My CentOS4.x install was 700 meg and took quite some time.

If all goes well I will have two identical machines for VMware testing. One with windows 2000 and the other with a flavor of Linux. I suspect that the Linux box will handle more guests and have faster IO. Both will have Per3d cards witih 128 megs of bbc and 6 drives in a raid 10 set, 4 gigs of ECC PC2100 ram and a 2.8 p4.

[Dallas]

The following is a link to a write up I did for using DSL as a host OS(50 megs). Once you have the host & Clients setup it allows you to make a cdrom iso of the system that will allow booting from a cd. Hope it helps... this is much easier then creating your own OS.

http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi?;act=ST;f=2;t=8355;st=5;r=1

Mine with DSL host and one DSL client os takes approx 350 megs on the cd.