libguestfs-make-fixed-appliance1

Usage

Overview

libguestfs-make-fixed-appliance lets you make a pre-built binary appliance for libguestfs.

Note that ordinary users should not need to run this tool.

Some reasons why you might want to use this include:

•

You want to make a self-contained libguestfs appliance that can be copied to another machine or platform that doesn't support supermin(1).

•

You have multiple users on the same machine and want to avoid the storage duplication and start-up overhead of having multiple cached copies of the appliance.

•

You want to have very predictable performance from libguestfs (see guestfs-performance(1)).

For deeper understanding of why you might need this tool, read "FIXED APPLIANCE" in guestfs-internals(1).

Instead of running this tool, you can download fixed appliances from http://libguestfs.org/download/binaries/appliance/. These appliances were made using this tool.

There are two ways to use this tool.

•

Specify an output directory, for example:

 libguestfs-make-fixed-appliance /usr/local/lib/guestfs/appliance

The output directory is created if it does not exist. Four files are created in this directory:

 <OUTPUTDIR>/kernel
 <OUTPUTDIR>/initrd
 <OUTPUTDIR>/root
 <OUTPUTDIR>/README.fixed

Note that "OUTPUTDIR/root" is a sparse file, so take care when copying it.

You can then run libguestfs (possibly after copying this directory to another machine) by setting the environment variable LIBGUESTFS_PATH to "OUTPUTDIR".

•

The alternative method is to use the --xz option to create a compressed tarball:

 libguestfs-make-fixed-appliance --xz

This creates a tarball in the current directory called:

 appliance-<VERSION>.tar.xz

(where "VERSION" is the version of libguestfs). The tarball contains the four files:

 appliance/kernel
 appliance/initrd
 appliance/root
 appliance/README.fixed

Note that "appliance/root" is a sparse file, so take care when copying it.

Options

--help

Display short usage information and exit.

-V

--version

Display the version number and exit.

--xz

Instead of creating the appliance in an output directory, create a compressed tarball of the appliance in the current directory called appliance-VERSION.tar.xz where "VERSION" is the version of libguestfs.

Using --xz can take some time. If working normally, the tool is completely silent when it is running.

Licensing

The fixed appliance is a complete Linux binary distro. If you distribute it, you may need to distribute corresponding source files to remain in legal compliance with the licenses of the software in the appliance (such as the GNU General Public License).

Exit status

libguestfs-make-fixed-appliance returns 0 if the appliance was built without errors.

Environment

For the full list of environment variables which may affect libguestfs, please see the guestfs(3) manual page.