image-factory is a command line tool for building golden Linux images. It uses virt-install to do installations via the network. The installation and configuration of the images is done using the netinstall support from the distributions, i.e.
- preseed for Debian/Ubuntu
- Kickstart for CentOS/Fedora
- AutoYaST for openSUSE
image-factory is used by IONOS Cloud to build the golden public Linux images for their Enterprise Cloud. The configuration files are shipped with this project to allow anyone to rebuild their images.
image-factory runs following steps:
-
Create a virtual RAW image using
qemu-img. -
Cache
linuxkernel andinitrd. -
Run installation using
virt-install.qemu:///sessionis used as session for normal users andqemu:///systemwhen run as root. -
The installation partition is mounted and the installer logs are removed.
-
zerofreeis run on the partition. -
If
formatis set toqcow2, the virtual raw images will be converted toqcow2usingqemu-img. -
The SHA 256 sum is calculated for the image.
-
The image will be uploaded to all locations configured in
upload_destinations. -
If
post-build-commandis configured, the specified command will be executed.
These components are needed to run image-factory:
- Python 3
- Python modules:
- httplib2
- parted
- qemu-utils for
qemu-img - virtinst for
virt-install - zerofree
pandoc is needed to generate the man page.
The test cases have additional requirements:
- black
- flake8
- isort
- pylint
image-factory can be run as normal user, but it need root permission for a
few operations like chmod, mount, and umount. Since these operations cannot be
secured with sudo's wildcards, image-factory-sudo-helper was introduced to
check the commands using regular expression.
To allow running image-factory as normal user, only
image-factory-sudo-helper needs sudo permission for the user. Example sudo
configuration for user jenkins:
jenkins ALL = NOPASSWD:SETENV: /usr/bin/image-factory-sudo-helper
On Debian and Ubuntu, the user has to be in the group disk to get the
permission for mounting loop devices.
HashiCorp Packer automates the creation of any type
of machine image (including non *nix). The
QEMU Builder can provide a similar
functionality to image-factory.
While HashiCorp Packer takes an URL pointing to an installer ISO,
image-install uses the smaller netinstall kernel and initrd files instead.
HashiCorp Packer provides post-processors that can enable the remaining
functionality of image-factory, namely
checksum and
local shell to upload
the images via rsync, however there is currently no dedicated post-processor
for it. image-factory supports rsync uploads via configuration option.
Contributions are welcome. The source code has test coverage, which should be preserved or increased. So please provide a test case for each bugfix and one or more test cases for each new feature. Please follow How to Write a Git Commit Message for writing good commit messages.
To create a release, increase the version in Makefile, document the
noteworthy changes in NEWS.md, and commit and tag the release:
git commit -s -m "Release image-factory $(make version)" Makefile NEWS.md
git tag "$(make version)" -m "Release image-factory $(make version)"The xz-compressed release tarball can be generated by running:
make dist