[Users] More on making an OpenVZ template

Sam Trenholme strenholme.usenet at gmail.com
Fri Aug 19 16:18:07 EDT 2011


I am continuing the work of making a tiny OpenVZ template.  One
discovery I have is that, for the OpenVZ tools to work, not only is it
mandatory for the system to have the Bash shell, but also that /bin/sh
has to be a symlink to Bash.  This is because the "vzctl" program
prepends the contents of the Bash-only
"/etc/vz/dists/scripts/functions" script to any script used by the
container to configure the system, and there does not appear to be any
way to configure a container to not use this Bash-only script.

In other words, any OpenVZ template without /bin/sh being an alias for
Bash can not be configured via the "vzctl" tools (nor the
corresponding Proxmox/SolusVM/whataever tools that call "vzctl").

This in mind, the next release of TinyVZ will include the Bash shell.
I actually prefer Bash over Busybox's "ash" shell; I *really* miss the
"!$" and "!*" shortcuts, as well as the "history" command, when using
this minimal shell.

Since this is an open source project I am not getting paid for, I have
no timeline of when I will make another TinyVZ release, nor do I
guarantee I will even make such a release.  Working on TinyVZ has
taught me a lot about OpenVZ and hopefully is something that is
useful.

- Sam


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