Linux-VServer Setup

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/559

*Tags*: chroot, downloads, offsite, rsync, vserver Add New Tag

I'm a frequent user of vserver and I like to create fresh installations as quickly as I can, for packaging or test purposes mostly. Unfortunately there aren't many current images available for download. So I made my own.

I've found a small number of vserver images available for download, unfortunately they tend to be obsolete or impractical to use compared to the standard debootstrap method.

I also like to have a repository of chroots available via rsync and so I've made them available at:

rsync rsync://packaging-farm.dachary.org/packaging-farm/

(That link can be found in the vserver downloads section. http://linux-vserver.org/Downloads#Chroot_repositories)

The rsync server contains the following distributions:

I update them from time to time (typically once a month) and they have been around for over two years now. The area in which these chroot are most usefull to me is for building packages. I've started to use them recently to create tests for sysadmin shell scripts: it is run in a chroot that is reset with "rsync —delete" before and after running.

I initialy thought that the lack of virgin chroot on the net was because my use case was wrong. I expected to hear from friends that there is a much better way to handle packaging and tests. After two years I'm still happy with my chroot collection and decided to share them with a broader audience.

documented on: 5 Nov 2007, loic