On 21.06.2015 02:25, Sebastian Pipping wrote:
Hi!
I registered for a closed beta account at CloudScale [1] a few weeks ago
and noticed that they offer a number of Linux flavors: Debian, Ubuntu,
CentOS, .. but no Arch Linux. They use OpenStack with the official
OpenStack images [2] of Debian, Ubuntu and so on.
It seems there are no official OpenStack images for Arch. There are the
ec2 images of Uplinklabs [3] but that's all I find on the net.
Arch is highly configurable so it's assumed that you build a system for
your needs by yourself.
I have been working on a tool called image-bootstrap [4] for a while,
originally aimed at creating virtual machine images for Debian and
Ubuntu. Recently, I have added Arch Linux support to image-bootstrap
(and created an Arch equivalent of Debian's debootstrap [5] called
"directory-bootstrap" in the process, same code base).
There is pacstrap utility. I think it is official equivalent of
debootstrap AND it is maintained by Arch developers.
Since today,
when passing the --openstack option to image-boostrap, it does create
bootable Arch OpenStack images. But there is something missing.
When giving birth to a new virtual machine, an OpenStack image file [6]
of say 1 GiB size is copied onto a say 50 GiB "disk", some kind of block
device passed to a hypervisor. The original image was generated
believing that the given hard disk was say 2 GiB in size, some fixed
size, not the size that OpenStack is actually launching virtual machines
with.
To give access to the full disk space to users, OpenStack images are
prepared to do the following:
1. During early boot (initramfs time), the one and only partition is
enlarged to the full size of the disk.
2. during normal boot, cloud-init is running resize2fs to enlarge
the ext4 root file system to the new size of that partition.
It's a little crazy, but it works: the user hardly notices.
In Debian, apart from cloud-init that magic is done by packages
cloud-utils and cloud-initramfs-growroot of cloud-initramfs-tools [7].
While Arch does have cloud-init, I find cloud-utils in AUR only and no
cloud-initramfs-growroot at all.
It seems that cloud-init can perform this task by itself
(https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Cloud-init#Other_sections_in_cloud.cfg).
There is also mkinitcpio-growrootfs
(https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/mkinitcpio-growrootfs/). It's
probably what you were looking for but it looks like package is not
supported by its developer anymore. So you probably shouldn't use this
mkinitcpio hook.
The cloud-utils package right now is in official repositories
(https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/cloud-init/), how you
missed that?
I am looking for Arch developers to bring these to the Arch master
repository.
There is yet something else: Trust. Anyone can make images and upload
them but who is going to trust the image if it is not signed by a person
that they trust?
There is a group of five people in the Arch master signing keys [8].
One of them created, signed and uploaded the
archlinux-bootstrap-*.tar.gz files that users rely on. My hope is that
one of these five is willing to use image-bootstrap [4] to create, sign
and upload OpenStack images as well.
archlinux-bootstrap-*.tar.gz files are meant for installation of
Archlinux from a computer running another Linux distribution
(https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Install_from_existing_Linux#Method_B:_Using_the_Bootstrap_Image_.28recommended.29),
so, of course, Arch developers sign this installation medium.
In my opinion, official Arch OpenStack images is pointless because what
point in server image that you need to configure anyway?
Thanks for your attention. Best,
Sebastian
[1] https://www.cloudscale.ch/
[2] http://docs.openstack.org/image-guide/content/ch_obtaining_images.html
[3] https://www.uplinklabs.net/projects/arch-linux-on-ec2/
[4] https://github.com/hartwork/image-bootstrap
[5] https://wiki.debian.org/Debootstrap
[6] http://docs.openstack.org/image-guide/content/ch_openstack_images.html
[7] https://packages.debian.org/source/sid/cloud-initramfs-tools
[8] https://www.archlinux.org/master-keys/
In conclusion, I have an impression that you miss the point of Arch, so
I point you towards the ArchWiki again:
Arch Linux -- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux
The Arch Way -- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way
Installation guide --
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide
cloud-init -- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Cloud-init
and, in general, the ArchWiki has a lot of useful information.
Regards,
Victor
