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OpenVZ Template - TKL Core/LAMP/MediaWiki v2009.x

Modified 08:53, 28 Nov 2010 by JedMeister | Page History

    Important Note: These instructions apply only to 8.04/Hardy based TKL (up to and including 2009.10-2). They do not work on the new 10.04/Lucid based TKL. Unfortunately as Ubuntu have dropped support for OpenVZ (both as guest and host) it's a little tricky to get 10.04 running as an OpenVZ guest. I have started work on a separate TKL Dev Wiki entry here.

    Below are the steps that I took to create an OpenVZ Template of (Ubuntu 8.04/Hardy based) TKL Core/LAMP/MediaWiki. This information will be superceded once the TKL devs produce official OpenVZ tempates, but until then this works for me (so far) and hopefully it will work for you too.

    Disclaimer: Be warned I am somewhat of a Linux noob! Most of this information I got off the OpenVZ wiki and a few other sources (including google) and with a huge amount of time and patience I patched it all together and have produced a working template.  I can not guarantee this will work for you and I have not done extensive testing yet so I can't even be sure mine works 100%. In other words proceed with caution!

    This may work for other TKL appliances and it may even work on other customised Ubuntu or Debian systems but I can not guarantee it. So far I have tested:

    • TKL-Core 2009.10
    • TKL-LAMP 2009.10
    • TKL-MediaWiki 2009.0? (previous stable release)
    • TKL-Fileserver 2009.10
    • TKL-PDC 2009.10

    I have heard that Java doesn't play well with OpenVZ by default (so the Zibra appliance may not work without some tweaking). Please see here for more details. There is also a link to some pre-created templates made by xtrac568

    I have developed a script which basically does all these steps automatically. It isn't very professional (just writing it was a huge learning curve!) but I am happy to share if you'd like a go at it. - JedMeister

    Install Turnkey Core Appliance

    This first step is pretty straight forward, proceed as you would for any TKL instalation. I suggest you use a virtual environment (eg VirtualBox/VMware/KVM/others...) but it should still work if you install to hardware .  I'm using the KVM componenet of Proxmox VE (not that it should matter).

    I use SSH to to access my base system but if you are doing this on hardware then you can do it from a local terminal. I do not recommend you do this from Webmin.

    Customise system

    Update/Install/Tweak anything you want to include in your Template.

    Please note that the steps below may make your host system unusable (unless you know what you are doing and can undo the steps or avoid the destructive ones). If you wish to maintain the current system, please do a full system backup prior - especially backup anything of importance!

    Edit sources.list (if required)

    I have a custom sources.list (which includes my ISPs Ubuntu mirror). Also I'm mucking around a fair bit with Ubuntu so I have an apt-cache server setup for good measure (makes installing packages that have already been used on another machine lightning fast!) To achieve this I SFTP into the appliance and copy in my modified sources.list and add proxy01 (with details of apt-cache server IP). If you wish to modify your sources.list manually you can use this (substitute nano for your favourite text editor if you wish):
    nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sources.list

    Save  (Ctrl-o in nano) and exit (Ctrl-x in nano).

    Tweak packages and cleanup

    As this will be a virtual machine, there are some packages that won't be wanted. If you wish to remove the packages I did, use this. Alternatively, customise this step as you please. I run a package list update first. If you get any errors from apt-get update, try again. If errors continue, troubleshoot this before continuing.
    apt-get update
apt-get remove module-init-tools xkb-data busybox-initramfs libvolume-id0 eject

    Note: on removing the deb-package "module-init-tools", a fake-modprobe is needed for IPv6 addresses, see below!

    Now install any packages you want to have in your default template. I installed quota, bzip2 and wget. quota is useful for allocating disk quotas for users. I used bzip2 to reduce the final filesize but it is optional. Even if you wish to use it, you can install it later if you'd rather so it won't be included in your template. wget is required to download the Debian procps (below). You can remove it (apt-get remove wget) after that step if you do not want it included in your template. localepurge will remove all locale based packages that do not relate to your locale. When this installs you need to choose the locales you wish to keep (up & down arrows, space to select). Make sure you select all that are relevant (eg for me in Australia, I need to choose en, en_AU and en_AU.UTF-8). Add any other packages which you want to have in a default template now too.

    apt-get install quota bzip2 wget localepurge

    Upgrade

    I don't think its necessary, but I did an upgrade. As a general rule I avoid upgrade, and rather just update individual packages when there is security risk, bug-fix and/or additional functionality I require. In the past I have experienced problems after an upgrade so I don't really recommend it on anything other than Core. Also TKL does a regular automatic security update (through cron_daily). Seeing as I was using Core (not too much to go wrong or break) and for the sake of completeness, I did a full upgrade on this install.

    First I made sure that we have got rid of any orphan packages and then I did the upgrade.

    apt-get autoremove

    followed by:

    apt-get upgrade

    Fix problem with Ubuntu procps

    When I originally wrote this, there was a bug with Ubuntu procps. To solve this I replaced the Ubuntu procps with the latest version from Debian Sid (procps>=1:3.2.7-8 at the time of the original post). Please note that this package will not update (using apt) and the package listed may be replaced. If you get an error message from the wget line below check the Debian packages for the latest one.

    It may be possible that this step is no longer required (if Ubuntu have also upgraded to a new version) but I have not checked so I have left this step included until I can confirm the Ubuntu bug no longer exists. If you are able to confirm or deny whether this is true before I do, please feel free to edit this page or post in the TKL forums (or even PM me).

    I used procps_3.2.8-8 from the Internode mirror (because I'm in Australia and this is my ISPs mirror). There are a list of mirrors here: http://packages.debian.org/sid/i386/procps/download Simply replace the url in the wget line below.

    wget http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/debian/pool/main/p/procps/procps_3.2.8-8_i386.deb
dpkg -i procps_3.2.8-8_i386.deb

    After it has installed fine, the .deb can be removed.

    rm /root/procps_3.2.8-8_i386.deb

    Mod to support IPv6

    If you plan on using IPv6 then you will need "fake-modprobe" for IPv6 addresses as module-init-tools was removed above. If you didn't remove module-init-tools you can skip this step. 
    ln -s /bin/true /sbin/modprobe

    On setup IPv6, the command "modprobe -Q IPv6" is called, which fails without the "fake-modprobe"

    Disable sync() for syslog

    Turn off doing sync() on every write for syslog's log files, to improve overall I/O performance. In Ubuntu this is already done for most log files and levels, so you can omit this step if you know what you are doing.
    sed -i -e 's@\([[:space:]]\)\(/var/log/\)@\1-\2@' /etc/syslog.conf

    Fix /etc/mtab

    Link /etc/mtab to /proc/mounts, so df and friends will work:
    rm -f /etc/mtab
ln -s /proc/mounts /etc/mtab

    After that, it would make sense to disable mtab.sh script/service which messes with /etc/mtab:

    update-rc.d -f mtab.sh remove

    Other services - /etc/init.d

    Some system services can (or in some cases should) be disabled. A few good candidates are:

    • acpid, amd (not needed)
    • checkfs, checkroot (no filesystem checking is required in container)
    • clock (no clock setting is required/allowed in container)
    • hdparm (container does not have real hard drives)
    • klogd (unless you use iptables to LOG some packets)
    • keymaps (container does not have a real keyboard)
    • kudzu (container does not have real hardware)
    • lm_sensors (container does not have access to hardware sensors)
    • microcodectl (container can not update CPU microcode)
    • netplugd (container does not have real Ethernet device)

    originally I also removed consolefont - but consoles don't display correctly so I leave it in now.

    so to get get rid of them:

    update-rc.d -f acpid remove
update-rc.d -f amd remove
update-rc.d -f checkfs remove
update-rc.d -f checkroot remove
update-rc.d -f clock remove
update-rc.d -f hdparm remove
update-rc.d -f klogd remove
update-rc.d -f keymaps remove
update-rc.d -f kudzu remove
update-rc.d -f lm_sensors remove
update-rc.d -f microcodectl remove
update-rc.d -f netplugd remove

    Set hostname and /etc/hosts

    echo "localhost" > /etc/hostname
echo "127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost" > /etc/hosts

    Remove nameserver(s)

    Remove DNS entries (first line). Alternatively you may set your local DNS (second line: I set mine to 192.168.1.60).
    > /etc/resolv.conf
echo 192.168.1.60 > /etc/resolv.conf

    Clean up packages, udev and logs

    Clean apt cache and clean up after udev:
    apt-get clean
rm -fr /lib/udev
    Clean up logs:
    cd /var/log
> messages; > auth.log; > kern.log; > bootstrap.log
> dpkg.log; > syslog; > daemon.log; > apt/term.log
rm -f *.0 *.1

    Package Template

    This can be achieved a number of ways but I opted to use the archive method. This will create a template archive which can be loaded straight into Promox VE using the web interface. It may work with other OpenVZ based VE but I haven't tested that.

    Collect files required

    I use tar to collect all the files we'll need from the host system (that we are creating a template of). While it does involve a little mucking around, tar is easy to use to get just the files we want.
    First create a file /tmp/excludes.excl (I like nano, but please substitute your favourite text editor).
    nano /tmp/excludes.excl

    then make these the contents:

    .bash_history
/dev/*
/mnt/*
/tmp/*
/proc/*
/sys/*
/cdrom
/media/*
/usr/src/*
/var/cache/apt/*
/lost+found

    Save and exit (<Ctrl><x> in nano, follow promts). Now use tar to collect all the files:

    tar cpf /tmp/template.tar / -X /tmp/excludes.excl

    Now create a sub folder /tmp/template and unpack the files there ready to make required modifications:

    mkdir /tmp/template
tar xvf /tmp/template.tar -C /tmp/template

    Install bzip2 (optional)

    If you would like to use bzip2 but didn't install it earlier (ie you didn't want it included in your template), install it now.
    apt-get update
apt-get install bzip2

    Recreate /var/cache/apt/archive/partial & create /dev/pts/ & /dev/shm/

    For apt to work you need to recreate the apt cache partial directory (the /var/cache/apt/ contents were excluded). These other directories are required too.

    mkdir /tmp/template/var/cache/apt/archives
mkdir /tmp/template/var/cache/apt/archives/partial
mkdir /tmp/template/dev/pts
mkdir /tmp/template/dev/shm

    Disable getty

    On a usual Linux system, getty is running on a virtual terminal, which a container does not have. So, having getty running doesn't make sense; more to say, it complains it can not open terminal device and this clutters the logs.

    Disable running getty.

    rm /tmp/template/etc/event.d/tty*

    Clear fstab

    > /tmp/template/etc/fstab

    Create /dev/ptmx /dev/urandom /dev/random & /dev/null

    mknod --mode 666 /tmp/template/dev/ptmx c 5 2
mknod --mode 444 /tmp/template/dev/random c 1 8
mknod --mode 444 /tmp/template/dev/urandom c 1 9

    If this is not correct sshd will not start correctly.

    mknod --mode 666 /tmp/template/dev/null c 1 3

    Copy /dev/ttyp* and /dev/ptyp*

    Copy /dev/ttyp* and /dev/ptyp* files from the host system.
    cp -a /dev/ttyp* /dev/ptyp* /tmp/template/dev/

    Disable old network interface (optional)

    If you are using DCHP (or at least didn't set a static IP) then you can ignore this step. Proxmox (and OpenVZ) allow you to set static IP when initialising a new machine from a template. Proxmox actually automatically creates the network interface config file on VM startup so no need to touch this if using that. Otherwise comment out all lines but these (the loopback):

    auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

    Edit the network interface config file like this (substitute nano for your favourite text editor if you wish):

    nano /etc/network/interfaces

    Package final template

    Even though I am using bzip2 compression, I use the .tar.gz extension as Proxmox will only find .tar.gz templates. If you aren't using Proxmox you can choose to use the .tar.bz2 extension if you'd rather. If you are using gzip compression substitute 'z' for 'j' ie tar czvf .....

    cd /tmp/template
tar cjvf /tmp/ubuntu-8.04-tkl-core_2009.10_i386.tar.gz *

    Possible bug with /dev/urandom

    On starting the VM in the boot log it complains that "cannot create /dev/urandom: permission denied". It looks like this is a permission issue.

    All the documentation I have read regarding OpenVZ templates suggests that 444 is the correct permission for this file. Even if you delete and recreate the file it still complains.

    I will leave it as is for now

    Note to Devs

    When it comes time to create the official TKL OpenVZ, from what I've read the best way would be to simply use the info contained here: http://wiki.openvz.org/Ubuntu_Hardy_template_creation

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    Comments

    Viewing 1 of 1 comments: view all
    #1
    littlejohn says:
    Not sure if this is on purpose, but ssh and scp won't work without this:
    mknod -m 644 /dev/tty c 5 0

    solution found here:
    http://ben.goodacre.name/tech/Can%27t_open_/dev/tty:_No_such_device_or_address_Error_%28Linux%29

    (fix for tkl lamp 2009-10)
    Posted 16:01, 25 Dec 2010
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