Cloud

Disk image creation with the VirtualBox hypervisor

Definitions

The Virtual Machine (VM) is supported by the Host Machine (HM). The Scientific Linux (SL) 6.2 distribution is installed on the VM.

VirtualBox hypervisor

The VirtualBox software is used to create a VM, to install a specific OS and to contextualise the disk image with the goal to boot the final product on a VM of the StratusLab Cloud.

VM creation

Once you have started the VirtualBox software, you can create a new VM with the following characteristics:

  • OS: Linux 2.6 (64 bit)
  • Memory: sufficient amount but not more than the available HM memory. For example, 1024 MB of RAM is necessary for SL6.2 graphical installation.
  • Disk space: a SATA disk (/dev/sr0) of size 10 GB is sufficient.
  • Network card: PCnet FAST III (NAT).
  • Disk image saving: VDI format disk_image.vdi.

OS installation

  • Distribution: installation of SL from a base OS ISO file downloaded locally.
  • Partitioning: a simple layer i.e. only 1 partition (/dev/sda1), no SWAP and no Logical Volume (LVM).
/dev/sda1 : size=10Gb, mount on=/, format=ext4
  • Network: a DHCP methode to obtain IP adress.

After the installation

VM administration:

$ yum update yum
$ yum update
$ yum install openssh-clients...