smartos > NetBSD Images (KVM)

NetBSD Images (KVM)

Created by hww3. Last updated by hww3, 6 years ago. Version #3.

I've put together some KVM images of NetBSD for use with Joyent Triton/SDC. They include a port of the Joyent Triton guest tools to NetBSD and so should be fairly well integrated with Triton. I haven't tested on SmartOS directly but see no reason for them not to work (with the possible exception of any guest tools features that don't exist on SmartOS.)

Features 

Images are available for NetBSD 8.0 as well as 7.1 and 6.1.5. These images contain the following:

•  Base OS install + man pages on a 10GB image.
• Virtio disk and networking
• Integration with Triton via Triton guest tools(root ssh key, data disk preparation, etc)
• pkgsrc/pkgin installed and ready to go
• Serial console configured for use with vmadm console

These images are intended to be light weight, so only the minimum install sets are included in these images. If you need compilers/system headers or X11 (notably required by Java), these are easy to add to your instance, as NetBSD install sets are just tarballs. For instance, to install system headers and gcc for NetBSD 6.1.5:

	# cd / && wget -q -O - \ 
          http://mirror.planetunix.net/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.1.5/amd64/binary/sets/comp.tgz \
          | tar xzvf -

I've tested both images as a pkgsrc build platform and they work at least as well as my previous virtual environment running on VMWare.

How the images are built

The NetBSD install process is interactive, so it didn't seem worthwhile to go the route taken with the FreeBSD and OpenBSD builds. Instead, I prepare a second CDROM with the guest tools and a few packages required to get them and pkgin set up. Once the install is complete (which takes only 2-3 minutes once you've done it a few times), the installer drops you to a prompt where the extra stuff gets added. I haven't bothered to put the commands into a script for running direct from the guest tools, though that certainly would be possible.

I've cloned the FreeBSD build project from Joyent and made changes to the guest tools as needed for NetBSD. I've also included the steps I took to prepare these images in the form of one or two crude scripts.

The repository containing the source code and downloads for the resulting images is located here:

https://bitbucket.org/hww3/netbsd-kvm-image-builder

Where to get the images

I have not yet posted the images online as I'd like to try to get them added to an existing dataset server such as datasets.at. The image builder repository has all of the steps required to create an image yourself, but if you're not feeling up to it, I can provide a copy of the images that I built using those instructions. Just contact me!

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