From: Björn Steinbrink (B.Steinbrink_at_gmx.de)
Date: Tue 03 May 2005 - 22:43:26 BST
OK, final try... I had a broken mail setup, please excuse my stupidity.
On 2005.05.03 17:21:36 +1200, Sam Vilain wrote:
> <snip>
> Bootstrapping Images
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> The status of debootstrap and `rpmstrap' in the current utilities was
> briefly discussed, so that vservers of lots of different types could
> easily be built without installing extra utilities manually.
>
> Björn pointed out scripts/vserver-build.debootstrap in the
> util-vserver distribution. There are also conflicts with some
> combinations of debian and rpm host vs guest building.
>
> The basic problem was agreed to be the way the tools try to install
> all the packages from the outside of the vserver, rather than the inside.
> Obviously each solution has its own benefits and disadvantages, but only
> bootstrapping the package utilities should need a packaging tool
> installed on the outer vserver - and that should be easily circumvented
> via guest images.
> </snip>
I'll try to provide some further information here... The main point was
that, for example, on a debian host you're pretty limited in which build
methods you can use. apt-rpm doesn't work (at least not easily if at
all) because there are name clashes between debian's apt and apt-rpm.
What is special about the debootstrap method is that it fetches a recent
debootstrap debian package if debootstrap is not available on the host,
unpacks it and it to create a debian vserver, without the help of any
debian specific package management tools. This allows to create a debian
vserver on any host system. This is the reason why I pointed it out ;)
What is special about the other build methods is that the package
management of the vservers built with these build methods is actually
done outside of the vserver, thus you don't need rpm, apt, yum or
whatever inside your vserver (you can switch between internal and
external packagemanagement). But this means that you need those tools on
the host, and as I said, for example debian+apt-rpm is hard, if possible
at all (i never actually tried, but i didn't hear of any success stories
either).
What Herbert suggested was to create/modify the build-methods, so that
also rpm based vservers can be created via temporary installations of
the necessary tools, and that those vservers have internal package
management, thus allowing to build, for example, an fc3 or mandriva
based vserver on a debian host.
Björn
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