rBuilder:VMware Virtual Appliance

From rPath Wiki

The VMware^® Virtual Appliance image build type is used to create a virtual appliance image ready to launched in any of several VMware virtual environments.

TO USE THIS VIRTUAL APPLIANCE: Download the completed image, unpack the archive, and use the VMX and VMDK files to launch the virtual machine within VMware's interface.

When building the appliance group to use this image type, the specifications required are those for VMware as well as for the different processor architectures on which the VMware environment resides. The following rMake command builds group-example for VMware for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures:

$> rmake build 'group-example[vmware is: x86]' 'group-example[vmware is: x86_64]'

The following options can be customized in the Advanced Options section when creating a build of this build type.

Custom output filename prefix

Use this to specify a custom prefix for filenames output from the build, overriding the default name-version-architecture prefix.

Custom Conary installLabelPath setting

Use this to specify the locations where your software appliance will retrieve software updates, such as a local Conary repository dedicated to the development of your software appliance. (If you do not choose this option, the install label paths are set to locations at rpath.org.)

Automatically install required dependencies during updates

Use this if you want the appliance to automatically install additional software on which updates may depend.

Use NAT instead of bridged networking

Use this if you want the appliance to use network address translation (NAT) networking instead of the default bridged mode networking.

Allow snapshots to be created

Use this to allow VMware snapshot creation functionality within the appliance.

How many MB of free space should be allocated in the image?

Use this to designate a specific amount of free space to be reserved in the same filespace in addition to that reserved for the operating system distribution. The default value for this is 250 MB.

How much memory should VMware use when running this image?

Use this to indicate to VMware how much RAM should be dedicated to the appliance. The default value for this is 256 MB.

How many MB swap space should be reserved in this image?

Use this to designate a size for the swap file in the filesystem that best meets the needs of your software appliance. The default value for this is 128 MB.

Which hard disk adapter should this image be build for?

Use the drop-down list to select whether the image should be built for an IDE or SCSI hard disk adapter.

Using VMware Images

Unpack VMware images and configure and start virtual machines as appropriate for your VMware product and operating system. rPath has provided some instructions for using VMware images on rPath Linux.

TECHTIP: VMware Image Size Limit

Versions of rBuilder prior to 3.1.1 will fail to generate VMware virtual appliance or VMware ESX Server appliance images larger than 2 GB.

Starting with rBuilder version 3.1.1, this size limit has been increased to 4 GB.

Starting with rBuilder version 4.0.0, gzip is used instead of zip, which removes this limitation.

When these limits are exceeded, an error message similar to the following will be displayed when creating a build:

The following steps can be taken to reduce the size of a build:

• Reducing the amount of free space or swap size (configured via the build's Advanced Options)
• Reducing the number of packages in the group on which your build is based