Overview ======== snf-image-creator is a simple command-line tools for creating OS images. The original media from which the image is created, can be a block device or a regular file that represents a hard disk. Given a media file, snf-image-creator will create a snapshot for it and will run a number of image preparation task on the snapshot, before the image is created. Snapshotting ------------ snf-image-creator works on snapshots of the original media. Any changes made by the program do not affect the original media. Preparation ----------- Some of the image preparation tasks that run on each image are OS specific. snf-image-creator will use heuristics to detect the OS of the image and determine which tasks should run on it. The main purpose of running those tasks is to: * Shrink the image * Clear out sensitive user data (passwords, keys, etc.) * Prepare the image for being deployed on a virtual environment (change device files, remove persistent net rules, etc.) Creation -------- The program can either dump the image file locally or directly upload it to pithos and register it with `okeanos `_. Image Format ------------ The images the program creates are in diskdump format. This is the recommended format for `snf-image `_, the Ganeti OS Definition used by `Synnefo `_.