I build Ubuntu OVAs offline using debootstrap->systemd-nspawn. All you really need to do is install the kernel and initramfs packages, then mount the fs to install grub to it.
Show HN: Convert your Containerfile to a bootable OS
31–40 of 61 posts
Re: Show HN: Convert your Containerfile to a bootable OS
#32And we've come full circle almost.
Re: Show HN: Convert your Containerfile to a bootable OS
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of my biggest complaints with distros has been the lack of documentation on how to actually build the distro itself, not just an ISO but like build all the packages from source as well. Like as if you were following an LFS book. I have seen VERY few distros that provide this. Do you think this helps that at all?
Universal Blue’s build system (not Blue-Build) is pretty clear, and self documenting. I maintained a personal fork of Bluefin for a while, and it was easy to understand!
What made you stop?
Re: Show HN: Convert your Containerfile to a bootable OS
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Universal Blue’s build system (not Blue-Build) is pretty clear, and self documenting. I maintained a personal fork of Bluefin for a while, and it was easy to understand!
What made you stop?
Honestly? Immersing myself headfirst into Nix/NixOS, which has been fun and worthwhile.. but I’m not convinced it’s really “better,” at least for my needs.
And the fact that it’s ever so slightly easier to build and deploy a NixOS VM from scratch on a Proxmox VE server than to build and deploy a CoreOS VM using Ignition (also on Proxmox).
But it’s probably worth it for me to switch back, at least for now. It takes maybe 10-15 minutes to build a bootable Bluefin fork native container image with GitHub Actions, but a relatively basic NixOS+ Plasma 6 image took closer to 60 minutes and came out to over 8 GB compressed…
Re: Show HN: Convert your Containerfile to a bootable OS
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
What made you stop?
Honestly? Immersing myself headfirst into Nix/NixOS, which has been fun and worthwhile.. but I’m not convinced it’s really “better,” at least for my needs. And the fact that it’s ever so slightly easier to build and deploy a NixOS VM from scratch on a Proxmox VE server than to build and deploy a CoreOS VM using Ignition (also on Proxmox). But it’s probably worth it for me to switch back, at least for now. It takes ma…
Interesting, I _just_ went from NixOS to Bluefin. I took home-manager with me, though, which gives me just enough Nix without the NixOS headaches (mainly around processes daring to bring "foreign" binaries into the system). My honeymoon period with Nix lasted about six months and was pretty quickly over. I stuck with NixOS for about 18 months only out of laziness of not wanting to set something else up. I really like this new stack, though. Time will tell if it's actually better.
Re: Show HN: Convert your Containerfile to a bootable OS
#36Is it something similar to d2vm(https://github.com/linka-cloud/d2vm)?
It would be nice to have my "own" Linux distro.
Re: Show HN: Convert your Containerfile to a bootable OS
#37What about the other way around? Writing my own docker(-compose)files by hand kindof stinks.
You can use the rootfs generated by a tool such as buildroot or yocto as a container layer.
Re: Show HN: Convert your Containerfile to a bootable OS
#38Excellent, now I can write docker files to run containers as VMs on FreeBSD!
Re: Show HN: Convert your Containerfile to a bootable OS
#39I don't understand how it works. Did I guess it right that it basically processes Containerfile and instead of producing a .tar artifact (which is what container images usually are) it produces .qcow2/.ami/.raw/.iso/.vmdk file which in case of .qcow2/.raw/.vmdk can be used by a virtualization software to start up a VM with a disk mounted from that file? Will the changes made inside a session with such a VM persist? o…
I think you are supposed to use their base images.
so it is only bootc-enabled container https://centos.github.io/centos-bootc/
So only CentOS? Would it be possible to run that with firecracker? If that is the case, then wouldn't it be better to just run a Docker/container file in a firecracker vm. It will be more isolation, and easier scripting and networking?
Re: Show HN: Convert your Containerfile to a bootable OS
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of my biggest complaints with distros has been the lack of documentation on how to actually build the distro itself, not just an ISO but like build all the packages from source as well. Like as if you were following an LFS book. I have seen VERY few distros that provide this. Do you think this helps that at all?
GNU Guix does an awesome job with this. The documentation is one of the main reasons I left NixOS, and then some time later I landed on Guix. I have stuck on the latter for a few years now.
Out of personal interest, do you also make use of the non-free parts of Guix? And if so, how well do they work, and how well are they documented compared to the "core" part? The orthodoxy of free software purity is nice, but I unfortunately also need to get CUDA working.
I tried Nix a few times, but the documentation was so lacking and/or outdated that I couldn't figure out how to get the setup I needed working, and I had to drop the idea as I couldn't justify the time investment that would be needed to prod around in the dark until everything worked.