OpenVZ: Notes on Scientific Linux 6 x86 OS Template Contribution

I posted a contributed OpenVZ OS Template today. The contributed OS Template is Scientific Linux 6 32 bit and it was contributed by Vic from powerpbx.org (canuck15@hotmail.com).

I asked him to share information about he created it and this is what he replied back with via email:

I have no plans to create a x86_64 version or provide regular updates to the x86 version at this time. The only reason I created the x86 version is because I needed a RHEL (or clone) v6 template for my own use. It is easy enough to update/modify/copy by someone else now that this version is out there.

I created it using this procedure and rsync from VMWARE to OpenVZ. Then I manually went through all the installed packages and took out as much as I could to get the size down. When in doubt I compared to the installed packages in a CentOS 5 template.

Yum would not remove kernel so I had to do a "rpm -e --nodeps kernel"

In the newly rsync'ed OpenVZ container I create a file called "vz.repo" in /etc/yum.repos.d with the following text:

[vz-base]
name=vz-base
mirrorlist=http://vzdownload.swsoft.com/download/mirrors/centos-5
gpgcheck=0

[vz-updates]
name=vz-updates
mirrorlist=http://vzdownload.swsoft.com/download/mirrors/updates-released-ce5
gpgcheck=0

then "yum install vzdev vzdummy-apache vzdummy-jre-el5 vzdummy-kernel-el5"

Could not get "vzdummy-glibc" to work. It caused the template to not load on reboot. Someone smarter than me will have to figure that one out. Perhaps vzdummy-glibc needs to be updated for RHEL 6.

Additional things I ran into that appear to be RHEL v6 specific are as follows.

You must comment out "console" in /etc/init/rc.conf and /etc/init/rcS.conf

You must also delete or rename tty.conf and start-ttys.conf.