Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Creating purpose-built TinyCoreLinux Images

fabianstumpf.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 33 posts

Re: Creating purpose-built TinyCoreLinux Images

#2

Post by mwcampbell »

As I get some pleasure out of writing scripts to build finely tuned minimal images like this, I found the article interesting. However, I think manipulating a qcow2 image directly via nbd is over-complicating it. I think it would be better to create a sparse file, mount that via a loopback device, work with that, and then convert it to a qcow2 image (or vmdk or whatever) at the end.

Re: Creating purpose-built TinyCoreLinux Images

#3

Post by vidarh »

mwcampbell wrote: post #2

As I get some pleasure out of writing scripts to build finely tuned minimal images like this, I found the article interesting. However, I think manipulating a qcow2 image directly via nbd is over-complicating it. I think it would be better to create a sparse file, mount that via a loopback device, work with that, and then convert it to a qcow2 image (or vmdk or whatever) at the end.

I'm not convinced that you're saving anything by avoiding nbd. You need to modprobe nbd and start qemu-nbd. Both single commands that you can cut and paste. What you gain is not having to convert an image at the end.

Re: Creating purpose-built TinyCoreLinux Images

#4

Post by eatonphil »

vidarh wrote: post #3
mwcampbell wrote: post #2

As I get some pleasure out of writing scripts to build finely tuned minimal images like this, I found the article interesting. However, I think manipulating a qcow2 image directly via nbd is over-complicating it. I think it would be better to create a sparse file, mount that via a loopback device, work with that, and then convert it to a qcow2 image (or vmdk or whatever) at the end.

I'm not convinced that you're saving anything by avoiding nbd. You need to modprobe nbd and start qemu-nbd. Both single commands that you can cut and paste. What you gain is not having to convert an image at the end.

I am with mwcampbell. There's something to say for the minimalism/lack of dependencies - even if it is not much more complex to use nbd. You don't need qemu to create a sparse file, mount it as a loopback device and manipulate it as a new device from there. If someone needs a qcow2 file afterward, fine. But that doesn't /need/ to be involved in the build step.

Re: Creating purpose-built TinyCoreLinux Images

#7

Post by mwcampbell »

diminish wrote: post #6

Does anyone have an idea how a minimal base Linux image can run inside a browser? Like can we create a small virtual Linux server right inside a browser?

http://jslinux.org/

It's a clever hack, but I don't know of any practical application. Did you have one in mind? Or is it just for the hack value?

Re: Creating purpose-built TinyCoreLinux Images

#8

Post by diminish »

mwcampbell wrote: post #7
diminish wrote: post #6

Does anyone have an idea how a minimal base Linux image can run inside a browser? Like can we create a small virtual Linux server right inside a browser?

http://jslinux.org/ It's a clever hack, but I don't know of any practical application. Did you have one in mind? Or is it just for the hack value?

a test / development environment inside the browser where a server is emulated for testing purposes too, accompanied with a code editor.

I d like to describe the vm configuration similar to chef or ansible in js and run some dev/test code.

Re: Creating purpose-built TinyCoreLinux Images

#9

Post by s-macke »

diminish wrote: post #6

Does anyone have an idea how a minimal base Linux image can run inside a browser? Like can we create a small virtual Linux server right inside a browser?

You need just the Linux kernel and Busybox in order to run Linux with a working shell. 2-4 MB all together I would say. My first Internet router ran a Linux from a 1.44MB disk 15 years ago.
Post reply on HN