[Libguestfs] Building PXE Bootable images using the libguestfs toolchain

[Jeff Schroeder]

As part of the oVirt Node[1] project, I'm going to P.O.C. a version of
the node using febootstrap 2.x instead of livecd-creator. The main
reasons in doing this is for allowing a r/w root filesystem without
some hacky overlayfs and just to see if it can be done. On IRC,
rwmjones mentioned a few issues he ran into with febootstrap 2.x where
some rpms had %post scripts which aren't really safe inside a chroot.
It would be nice to get some more detail as to what problems exactly
have been encountered and what is the best solution for mitigating
this. It is a lot trickier to setup, but perhaps lxc would be better
than chroot for this type of thing?

The Node project is also interested in creating nodes using other
Linux distributions such as Debian or Ubuntu. That is why febootstrap
3.x really excited me until realizing it is for supermin appliances
only. What issues and challenges have you already encountered doing
something like this? It would be nice, but perhaps impossible to find
a mostly distribution neutral way of doing these things. Creating a
"chrootable" filesystem and then running image-minimizer seems like a
decent plan of attack for me.

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ovirt_Node

-- 
Jeff Schroeder

Don't drink and derive, alcohol and analysis don't mix.
http://www.digitalprognosis.com