[Users] Why open source OpenVZ project require commercial CloudLinux as platform?

[Scott Dowdle]

Greetings,

----- Original Message -----
> 4) They offer "Debian 8 templates" but do not provide any references
> "How you can build template manually".

One clarification from my last post... yes, it is true that vzpkg died and vztt (the commercial OS Template build system from Virtuzzo only recently released as open source and not quite usable by mainstream OpenVZ users yet) has been used for some time to build the official OpenVZ OS Templates.  That is one area where the current EL6-based OpenVZ stable setup is lacking with regards to transparency.

So far as how to build templates manually... there is actually quite a bit of documentation on that... but some of it is a bit dated... and very piecemeal.  That much is also true.  Is it hard?  Not really.

Basically it is recommended you use any one of the official OpenVZ OS Templates... but if you want to build your own... the basic concept is to do so on a Debian host... using the standard Debian tools... particularly debootstrap.  Install a minimal system into a different install root.  How minimal?  Well, you don't really want the graphical environment stuff... but anything else is fair game.  Slightly more than a base system should work.  Feel free to take a container made from the official OpenVZ Debian 8 OS Template as a model... see what packages are installed in it... that's where I would start.  Once you have a minimal install plopped into a directory you can tar.gz|xz it up and use it as an OS Template for creating a container and testing it... and then make whatever modifications are desired to make it work as desired.  Usually there are only a few modifications that are needed to the stock install... and that is mostly for performance optimization... and not necessarily needed for basic functionality.

>From my description this might seem sort of a dark science or something... but if you look at the number and variety of community contributed OS Templates, you will see a number of people have figured it out one way or another.  It really isn't that difficult.

So far as Debian 8 is concerned... it is a little more challenging with it being the first Debian release to switch init systems in a while... so it is a lesser known quantity... from a traditional Debian user's perspective.  I in no way mean to diminish Debian nor systemd with that statement.  I'm a big supporter of both... but my preferred platforms are Fedora (desktop) and EL (RHEL and clone) for server.  Fedora has been on systemd for a couple of years now... and RHEL switched to it with EL7 which is a bit older than Debian 8.

TYL,
-- 
Scott Dowdle
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Belgrade, MT 59714
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