Jeos: Canonical's virtualization-specific Ubuntu Linux

[EmmEff]

So I'll ask too, Where's JeOS?

Today is/was supposed to be the release date, but I've yet to see anything that's not 7.10.

[EmmEff]

I didn't see anybody mention that there's a JeOS entry in Launchpad now...

https://code.launchpad.net/ubuntu-jeos/

Having looked at the script, there's reference to some packages (linux-virtual) and a virtual kernel that do not appear to be included in Gutsy.

FWIW, their procedure is virtually identical to what I originally did to create VMs almost a year ago with 6.06LTS (minus the virtual kernel and "special" package(s)).

Looking forward to seeing the rest of this show itself... anything to make my VMs better!

[locutus42]

Ever done it?

The base includes ALSA (sound) stuff as well as Bluetooth support, for example. Neither of which are required for a JeOS-based appliance.

Installing Avahi, for example, also includes dependencies to X11 libraries, which drags in a bunch of other stuff that shouldn't be on a lean VM-based server.

There is much room for improvement in what constitutes a base system in Ubuntu.

FYI, looking for a trimmed Ubuntu server OS I installed Gutsy 7.10 DNS server install. Seeing as I don't want the bind stuff, here's some things which don't seem generally too useful but were installed:
note: result from using "sudo dpkg -l"

alsa-base alsa-utils bind9 bind9-doc bind9-host libasound2 libbind9-30 libdns32 libisc32 libisccc30 libisccfg30 libiw29 liblwres30 libusb-0.1-4 linux-sound-base ntfs-3g libntfs-3g12 pcmciautils popularity-contest ppp pppconfig pppoeconf reiserfsprogs wireless-tools wpasupplicant

Add "sudo apt-get remove" to the head of that list and save some space. Apt listed 22MB saved/removed and it lookes like there's a 7MB initrd backup in /boot which can go also.

[EmmEff]

What is your installation size down to after removing those?

I used to build virtual appliances on Gentoo. My first appliance (incl. Lighttpd, PHP, Dropbear for SSH, and Busybox for most everything else) was around 10MB compressed. Now with Ubuntu, my appliances are 130MB to 200MB (depending on which apps are installed).

I build a Tomcat appliance and for some reason I gcj is an installation dependency for Tomcat 5.5 despite trying to make it Sun JDK 6 only. Far too much bloat!

[locutus42]

What is your installation size down to after removing those?

UPDATE: Two Gutsy server installations( one using same DNS option and one with no selected option ) resulted in "zip -r9" sizes of 216MB and 210MB for the two options and after "apt-get remove" on the above listed packages.

[IronWolve]

Any update yet? Still havnt seen the JEOS released other than the script to build it. (Does it even work?)

[EmmEff]

The script contains references to packages that aren't available, so no, it doesn't work

[nealmcb]

The script contains references to packages that aren't available, so no, it doesn't work

On 2007-11-01 some updates to the ubuntu-jeos trunk were made, and it works for me:
https://code.launchpad.net/ubuntu-jeos

I uploaded my own "nealmcb" branch with qemu support:

https://code.launchpad.net/~nealmcb/ubuntu-jeos/nealmcb

EmmEff, can you post a link or some more info on your gentoo appliance? What VM do you run it on?

[EmmEff]

On 2007-11-01 some updates to the ubuntu-jeos trunk were made, and it works for me:
https://code.launchpad.net/ubuntu-jeos

I uploaded my own "nealmcb" branch with qemu support:

https://code.launchpad.net/~nealmcb/ubuntu-jeos/nealmcb

I will have to give that a try. Thanks for the headsup.

EmmEff, can you post a link or some more info on your gentoo appliance? I assume that doesn't include a kernel? What VM do you run it on?

My startup company has been building virtual appliances for almost 3 years now. We first started out doing work on Gentoo and uClibc but turned out there were too many limitations (for example, not enough applications would build with the libc subset).

Currently we offer LAMP, LAPP, Cacti, and Tomcat appliances based on Ubuntu 7.04 Server Edition.

Of course it includes a kernel It wouldn't boot without it... all of our stuff has been primarily developed for VMware desktop and ESX products, although we've done work with qemu, VirtualBox, XenSource OSS, XenServer, Virtual Iron, Moka5, and Microsoft Virtual PC/Virtual Server.

We're keen on making Ubuntu-based appliances that have a footprint similar to that of our custom Gentoo-based appliances, and still retain all the benefits of Ubuntu.

[nealmcb]

I edited out my kernel question after a bit more thought I was thinking your stuff might run in one of those "container" or "jail" like systems that use the kernel of the host os.

The idea of using busybox to replace lots of stuff is interesting. Has anyone put together an ubuntu derivitave that relies on busybox?

This is a command line I've used with that "nealmcb" version of ubuntu-jeos (after installing
apt-catcher which caches apts and dramatically speeds up the apt-get stuff that debootstrap does). It uses ts (from the moreutils package) to timestamp each line of output:

sudo ubuntu-jeos-builder -t /dev/shm --addpkg openssh-server --mirror http://localhost:3142/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu --vm qemu 2>&1 | ts %H:%M:%S > jb.out

cd ubuntu-jeos-gutsy-i386
./launchjeos -redir tcp:2222::22 -monitor stdio

ssh ubuntu@localhost -p 2222