{"id":214,"date":"2015-10-17T13:40:18","date_gmt":"2015-10-17T11:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mail-e.dk\/pmsapp.org\/?p=214"},"modified":"2015-10-17T13:40:18","modified_gmt":"2015-10-17T11:40:18","slug":"creating-an-ova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mail-e.dk\/pmsapp.org\/?p=214","title":{"rendered":"Creating an OVA"},"content":{"rendered":"

While working on creating the next version of the pmsApp OVA, I ran into some issues so I thought I would try to make a small guide to creating an OVA here. Mostly for my own benefit.<\/p>\n

I installed version 0.2 of the pmsApp and updated it to get the latest software versions. When I then tried to create a new OVA it turned out to be quite a lot larget than the original. I needed to make the image smaller.<\/p>\n

I started out by clearing the yum cache and uninstalling the old kernel, that shrinked the used space to around the same as before the update. I found this guide<\/a> as to how to prepare a VM to be a template, that freed up a bit more space.<\/p>\n

Using VirtualBox, i created an OVA from the VM. Now the problem is that an OVA created with VirtualBox can not be imported into ESXi. Fortunately an OVA is actually just a tar archive so I was able to extract the .ovf file and the vmdk’s without issues. After that it is a queston of editing the ovf and changing the hardware version from virtualbox-2.2 to vmx-Y where Y is the vmware hardware version wanted. I plan on going with vmx-8.<\/p>\n

Now the problem is assemling the OVA again, to do that, I used vmware’s ovftool, but it wants a .mf file to ensure that the files are not corrupted. I found this<\/a> article, explaining how to create the .mf file.<\/p>\n

To have everything in one place, here is what I have done to the VM to make it into an OVA:<\/p>\n

First, we are working “inside” the VM to reduce space used.<\/p>\n

Stop logging:<\/p>\n

service rsyslog stop\r\nservice auditd stop<\/pre>\n
Remove old kernels:<\/p>\n
uname -a\r\nrpm -qa | grep kernel\r\n#remove old kernel versions with. yum remove<\/pre>\n
Clean yum cache:<\/p>\n
yum clean all<\/pre>\n
Empty logs:<\/p>\n
logrotate -f \/etc\/logrotate.conf\r\nrm \u2013f \/var\/log\/*-???????? \/var\/log\/*.gz \/var\/log\/*.old \/var\/log\/anac*\r\ncat \/dev\/null > \/var\/log\/audit\/audit.log\r\ncat \/dev\/null > \/var\/log\/wtmp\r\ncat \/dev\/null > \/var\/log\/lastlog\r\n#there might be other logfiles to empty out with cat \/dev\/null\r\n#*I will update this next time I go through the process<\/pre>\n
Clean tmp space:<\/p>\n
rm -rf \/tmp\/*\r\nrm -rf \/var\/tmp\/*<\/pre>\n
Zero out freespace to ensure disk images can be made as small as possible:<\/p>\n
dd if=\/dev\/zero of=\/boot\/zerofile bs=1M\r\nsync\r\nrm -rf \/boot\/zerofile\r\n\r\ndd if=\/dev\/zero of=\/zerofile bs=1M\r\nsync\r\nrm +rf \/zerofile<\/pre>\n
Finally shut down the vm:<\/p>\n
shutdown -h now<\/pre>\n
Using VirtualBox, I exported the VM as pmsApp-0.3.ova. Next are the steps taken to ensure that the OVA is as small as possible and can be imported by ESXi.<\/p>\n
Extract OVA:<\/p>\n
mv pmsApp-0.3.ova pmsApp-0.3.tar\r\ntar xf pmsApp-0.3.tar<\/pre>\n
Above step can be skipped if the VM is exported as .ovf instead of .ova<\/p>\n
Replace the system type to ensure that the OVA can be imported by ESXi:<\/p>\n
sed 's\/virtualbox-2.2\/vmx-8\/g' pmsApp-0.3.ovf > pmsApp-tmp.ovf\r\nmv pmsApp-tmp.ovf pmsApp-0.3.ovf<\/pre>\n
Ensure that the disk image is as small as possible:<\/p>\n
qemu-img convert -p -O vmdk pmsApp-0.3-disk1.vmdk thindisk.vmdk\r\nmv thindisk.vmdk pmsApp-0.3-disk1.vmdk<\/pre>\n
Create a manifest file to ensure data consistency in OVA:<\/p>\n
openssl sha1 *.ovf *.vmdk > pmsApp-0.3.mf<\/pre>\n
Create the OVA:<\/p>\n
ovftool pmsApp-0.3.ovf pmsApp-0.3.ova<\/pre>\n
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