Synnefo » snf-image-creator

Overview

^^^^^^^^

snf-image-creator is a simple command-line tool for creating OS images. The

original media the image is created from, can be a block device, a regular

file that represents a hard disk or the host system itself.

Snapshotting

============

snf-image-creator works on snapshots. Any changes made by the program do not

affect the original media.

Image Preparation

=================

During the image creation, a number of system preparation operations are

applied on the media snapshot. Some of those are OS specific. snf-image-creator

will use heuristics to detect the OS and determine which operations to apply.

Those operations will:

 * Shrink the image

 * Clear out sensitive user data (passwords, ssh keys, history files, etc.)

 * Prepare the guest OS for being deployed on a virtual environment (change

   device names, remove persistent net rules, etc.)

Creation

========

The program can either dump the image file locally or use

`./kamaki <https://code.grnet.gr/projects/kamaki>`_ to directly upload and

register it on a `Synnefo <https://code.grnet.gr/projects/synnefo>`_

deployment as private or public image.

Image Format

============

The extracted images are in diskdump format, which is a raw dump of a disk

device (or file). This is the recommended format for

`snf-image <https://code.grnet.gr/projects/snf-image>`_, the Ganeti OS

Definition used by `Synnefo <https://code.grnet.gr/projects/synnefo>`_.