AOS

Appliance Operating System

Summary

Appliances are pre-installed, pre-configured, system images. This Spin is intended to make it easier for anyone (ISVs, developers, OEMS, etc) to create and deploy virtual appliances. The AOS (The Appliance Operating System) is a scaled down version of Fedora with a small footprint containing only the packages necessary to run an appliance.

Past Releases

Owner(s)

Name: David Huff
email: dhuff@redhat.com
IRC: huffd

Detailed Description

AOS: The AOS is a scaled down version of Fedora with a small footprint containing only the packages necessary to run an appliance. The hardware supported by this spin of Fedora would be limited, primarily focusing on virtual containers such as KVM and VMware. The goal is to create a base that developers can build their applications on top of, only pulling in packages that their software requires. A "start from the bottom and build up" mentality.

This is similar to the concepts of JeOS (Just enough operation system).

See more info on the project at:

http://thincrust.net

Benefit to Fedora

AOS spin will:

provide a template for developers who want to build a fedora based appliance.
provide a minimal version of fedora for those who want to start form the ground up and add only what they want/need
allow developers to "kick the tires" of the AOS without having to build it from scratch.

Kickstart File

http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=spin-kickstarts.git;a=blob_plain;f=fedora-aos.ks;hb=master

ISO Name / FS Label

Fedora-$release-$arch-AOS

Dependencies

To build:

Livecd-tools
appliance-tools

Requirements:

Bootable virtual disk image with: yum, dns, grub, and se-linux all working on start-up.
Current package set is 140 packages @ 360M.
For F-12: I would like to add:
- smaller footprint
- make kick-start prettier to ahear with the spin guidelines to not exclude packages.
  - either create a base-pkgs.ks file to be included in the snippets dir or
  - possibly create a new comps group for the minimal appliance and above requirements?

Scope / Testing

Scope

* Requires hosting an AOS kickstart file in the kickstart pool 
* Requires hosting a binary image on http://spins.fedoraproject.org/ 
* Would like to have an new comps group form mini appliance package set

Testing

1) Download image
2) Launch image on kvm via virt-image on Rawhide
3) Launch image on VMware??

In all cases the expected results are really "It boots, we can log in"

Spins Page

Slogan

"Minimal Fedora, build what you need on top!!" or something similar

Spin description

The Appliance Operating System (AOS) is a minimal operating system definition, containing only the packages necessary to run an appliance. The AOS is meant to be a base, on which new appliance's can be built on top of and customized for a specific application. The AOS is described in a kickstart file and is hosted in the Fedora Spins KickstartPool, this definition is meant to evolve over time to become a smaller, more usable base appliance defination. The AOS is designed to work as a virtual machine or as a traditional locked down bare metal appliance.

Screenshot

Nothing fancy no X

Download tab

The AOS is currently available in Fedora 10 as a Fedora Spin, which is a pre-build "binary blob." The blob is packaged as a tarball, and includes a raw disk image and meta data required to run the appliance in a virtual container. The AOS image can be downloaded here http://spins.fedoraproject.org/

Once downloaded, you can launch the AOS as a virtual appliance on a Fedora using the following steps, It is recommended to be running F-10 or greater this should also work with F-9 or Rawhide.

  1. Install all prerequisite virt tools using yum: *note to use kvm you must be running a full virt box
     # yum install qemu kvm libvirt libvirt-python python-virtinst virt-manager virt-viewer
  2. Unpack the tarball containing the AOS:
     tar -xzvf F10-x86_64-AOS.tar.gz
  3. Use virt-imge to launch the image:
     virt-image F10-x86_64-AOS.xml
  4. Use "virsh list" to see if its running and get the IDNUM
     # virsh list
  5. Connect to appliance and log in to verify its running:
     # virt-viewer IDNUM

Support tab

http://thincrust.net/
IRC: #thincrust on freenode
Discussion of this project takes places at the thincrust-devel@redhat.com mailing list:
- http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/thincrust-devel

Custom branding

Currently we do not hve a logo however we could be consistent with the thincrust site which is minimalistic.

Comments and Discussion

See Talk:AOS_Spin

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AOS