gen-vm-image

This package can be used for generating virtual machine images. The gen-vm-image tool can also be used as an initializer plugin for corc

Dependencies

The dependencies required to use this package to generate virtual machine images can be found in the dep directory for the supported distributions.

Installation

The current stable release version gen-vm-image tool can be installed directly from pypi via:

pip install gen-vm-image

Alternatively, you can install the current development version by firstly cloning the repository:

git clone https://github.com/ucphhpc/gen-vm-image.git

Then, secondly installing the gen-vm-image tool either in its own virtual environment:

cd gen-vm-image
make install

or systemwide:

cd gen-vm-image
make install PYTHON=path/to/your/systemwide/python

Build a Virtual Machine Image

Before an image can be generated, you first have to create an architecture file that defines which images should be built. What name this architecture file is given is not important, but it should be in YAML format and contain the following structure:

owner: <string> # The owner of the image.
images: <key-value pair> # The images to be generated.
  <image-name>:
    name: <string> # The name of the image.
    version: <string> # (Optional) The version of the image.
    size: <string> # The size of the to be generated vm image disk, can use suffixes such as 'K', 'M', 'G', 'T'.
    input: <dict> # Input can be defined if the generated image should be based on a pre-existing image.
      url: <string> # An URL to an image that should be used as the input image for the generated image.
      format: <string> # The format of the input image, could for instance be `raw` or `qcow2`.
      checksum: <dict> # A dictionary that defines the checksum that should be used to validate the input image.
        type: <string> # The type of checksum that should be used to validate the image. For valid types, see the supported algorithms `Here <https://docs.python.org/3/library/hashlib.html#hashlib.new>`_
        value: <string> # The checksum value that should be used to validate the image.

An example of such a file can be found in the examples directory.

Upon creating such a file, the gen-vm-image command can be used to generate the virtual machine image. The totality of the command can be seen below:

usage: gen-vm-image [-h]
                    [--images-output-directory IMAGES_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY]
                    [--overwrite]
                    [--generate-gocd-config]
                    [--gocd-config-name GOCD_CONFIG_NAME]
                    [--gocd-build-branch GOCD_BUILD_BRANCH]
                    [--verbose]
                    [--version]
                    architecture_path

positional arguments:
  architecture_path     The path to the architecture file that defines the images to build

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --images-output-directory IMAGES_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY
                        The path to the output directory where the images will be saved (default: generated-images)
  --overwrite           Whether the tool should overwrite existing image disks (default: False)
  --generate-gocd-config
                        Generate a GoCD config based on the architecture file (default: False)
  --gocd-config-name GOCD_CONFIG_NAME
                        Name of the generated gocd config file (default: 1.gocd.yml)
  --gocd-build-branch GOCD_BUILD_BRANCH
                        The branch that GoCD should use to build images (default: main)
  --verbose, -v         Print verbose output (default: False)
  --version             Print the version of the program

In summation, when the gen-vm-image path/to/architecture.yml command is executed, the specified images will be generated in the --image-output-path directory.