The idea here is to make a version of linux intended to drive large datacenters. This means easy to deploy, easy to maintain, and does not go down often.
- Very small
- pxe'able
- dpkg/apt!
- works with ansible and cloud-config
- No-reboot upgrades (with apt)
- No release cycle, so you never need to do a dist-upgrade
You can build a KVM image for testing like so:
./create-image.sh /var/lib/libvirt/images/debian-minimal.qcow2 debian-minimal unstable
Here's a sample libvirt xml:
<domain type='kvm'>
<name>debian-minimal</name>
<memory unit='KiB'>524288</memory>
<currentMemory unit='KiB'>524288</currentMemory>
<vcpu>1</vcpu>
<os>
<type arch='x86_64'>hvm</type>
<boot dev='hd'/>
</os>
<features>
<acpi/>
<apic/>
</features>
<clock offset='utc'/>
<on_poweroff>destroy</on_poweroff>
<on_reboot>restart</on_reboot>
<on_crash>restart</on_crash>
<pm>
<suspend-to-mem enabled='no'/>
<suspend-to-disk enabled='no'/>
</pm>
<devices>
<emulator>/usr/bin/kvm</emulator>
<disk type='file' device='disk'>
<driver name='qemu' type='qcow2'/>
<source file='/var/lib/libvirt/images/debian-minimal.qcow2'/>
<target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/>
</disk>
<interface type='bridge'>
<source bridge='virbr0'/>
<model type='virtio'/>
</interface>
<serial type='pty'>
<target port='0'/>
</serial>
<console type='pty'>
<target type='serial' port='0'/>
</console>
<input type='mouse' bus='ps2'/>
<input type='keyboard' bus='ps2'/>
<graphics type='vnc' port='-1' autoport='yes'>
<listen type='address' address='0.0.0.0'/>
</graphics>
<video>
<model type='cirrus' vram='16384' heads='1' primary='yes'/>
</video>
<memballoon model='virtio'/>
</devices>
</domain>
You can try running the image with that xml by running:
virsh create debian-minimal.xml