3 08 2013

Setting up a VDS using a stacklet image.

Stacklet is a super awesome site that provides OS images for several virtualization platforms. Since we mostly use Xen at work, this guide will be for Xen (funnily enough). Stacklet does require a subscription, but it’s pretty cheap.

On the site find the image you want to use, for this guide we will be setting up a CentOS 6.4 x86-64 server.

CentOS 6.4 for Xen on x86-64
Format: Xen 3/Xen 4 Architecture: x86-64

curl -O "http://stacklet.com/dl/4a....84c6f3d/centos.6-4.x86-64.20130309.img.tar.bz2"

It might take a little while to download, they have terrible speeds. :(

Once it’s downloaded, extract it.

tar -xvf centos.6-4.x86-64.20130309.img.tar.bz2

You will have two files;

centos.6-4.x86-64.20130309.img, which is the image.

centos.6-4.x86-64.20130309.pygrub.cfg, which is a example config file.

Make a directory to mount the image to.

mkdir /root/CentOS64

Mount the image to the directory as a loopback device.

mount -o loop centos.6-4.x86-64.20130309.img /root/CentOS64/

Now if you list the contents of the directory you created you will see the file system of the image.

ls -la /root/CentOS64/

total 108
drwxr-xr-x  22 root root  4096 Mar  9 16:10 .
dr-xr-x---.  9 root root  4096 Aug  3 20:58 ..
dr-xr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Mar  9 15:56 bin
dr-xr-xr-x   4 root root  4096 Mar  9 15:57 boot
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Sep 23  2011 dev
drwxr-xr-x  60 root root  4096 Mar  9 15:58 etc
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Sep 23  2011 home
dr-xr-xr-x   9 root root  4096 Mar  9 14:59 lib
dr-xr-xr-x   7 root root 12288 Mar  9 15:56 lib64
drwx------   2 root root 16384 Mar  9 16:10 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Sep 23  2011 media
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Sep 23  2011 mnt
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Sep 23  2011 opt
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Aug 10  2012 proc
dr-xr-x---   2 root root  4096 Mar  9 15:00 root
dr-xr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Mar  9 15:57 sbin
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Sep 23  2011 selinux
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Sep 23  2011 srv
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Sep 23  2011 sys
drwxrwxrwt   2 root root  4096 Mar  9 15:58 tmp
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root  4096 Mar  9 14:54 usr
drwxr-xr-x  17 root root  4096 Mar  9 14:54 var

Then you just need to setup the VDS as normal.

Create the logical volume.

lvcreate -L20G -n exampleSetup vg

Create the swap.

lvcreate -L1G -n exampleSetup-swap vg

Make the filesystem.

mkfs -t ext3 /dev/vg/exampleSetup

Make the swap

mkswap /dev/vg/exampleSetup-swap

Make a directory to mount the volume to.

mkdir /mnt/exampleSetup

Mount the volume

mount /dev/vg/exampleSetup /mnt/exampleSetup

Copy the CentOS image to the mountpoint.

cp -ax /root/CentOS64/* /mnt/exampleSetup

Set the hostname.

nano /mnt/exampleSetup/etc/sysconfig/network

NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME=exampleSetup.domain.tld

Setup networking

nano /mnt/exampleSetup/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=static
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
IPADDR=192.168.1.55
GATEWAY=192.168.1.1
NETMASK=255.255.255.0

Set nameservers.

nano /mnt/exampleSetup/etc/resolv.conf

nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4

Add swap to fstab.

nano /mnt/exampleSetup/etc/fstab

/dev/xvda        /             ext4    defaults,errors=remount-ro 1 1
none             /dev/shm      tmpfs   defaults                   0 0
/dev/xvdb        swap          swap    defaults                   0 0
/usr/tmpDSK      /tmp          ext3    defaults,noauto            0 0

Unmount the volume.

umount /mnt/cpanelImage

Generate a MAC address with the easymac script and note it down.

/usr/local/sbin/easymac.sh -x

Change to the Xen config directory

cd /etc/xen/

Make a new config file.

nano exampleSetup

bootloader = "/usr/bin/pygrub"
memory = 768
name = "exampleSetup"
vif = [ 'bridge=<bridge>, mac=<mac address>' ]
disk = ['phy:vg/exampleSetup,xvda,w','phy:vg/exampleSetup-swap,xvdb,w']
root = "/dev/xvda"
extra = "fastboot"
vcpus = 4
acpi = 0

Once you have saved/exited the config you can start the VM.

xm create -c exampleSetup

The -c attaches a console.

Change the password immediately!

Once the password has been changed, just check you can ping things.

ping google.com
PING google.com (173.194.34.35) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from par03s03-in-f3.1e100.net (173.194.34.35): icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=9.59 ms

Then ssh to your VDS from your desktop.

Logout of the root session on the console by typing ‘exit’ and then to escape from the console back to the nodes shell do;

Ctrl + ]

Update CentOS over ssh.

yum -y update

Then you are ready to do what you want with it. :)

Creating users with Puppet. Yum: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery

Setting up a VDS using a stacklet image.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply