[Libguestfs] Introducing snf-image-creator

[Nikos Skalkotos]

Hello all,

I'd like to introduce to you snf-image-creator, an OS image creation
tool that makes heavy use of libguestfs. We have been developing it for
almost 3 years and use it with the Synnefo[1] open source IaaS cloud
software and also with Google's Ganeti[2] cluster management software.
However it is completely independent from the above solutions and can be
used as a generic image creation tool too.

It comes in two variants:
 * snf-image-creator: A user-friendly dialog-based program
 * snf-mkimage: A non-interactive command-line program

Unlike Oz, it takes as input, media that represents a hard disk (a block
device, an image file or the host system itself) with an installed OS on
it. It snapshots the hard disk, performs various cleanup tasks on the
snapshot (like virt-sysprep), shrinks the snapshot and finally dumps the
final prepared image on a local file or uploads and registers it with a
Synnefo deployment. It can fully operate on Linux, Windows and FreeBSD
input media. On Windows it can automatically install the needed VirtIO
drivers and perform sysprep. It can also be used to create an image out
of the Linux host system itself (host bundling process).

The documentation page is here:
https://www.synnefo.org/docs/snf-image-creator/latest/index.html

Our code is hosted on github:
https://github.com/grnet/snf-image-creator

It is still under active development but it's pretty stable. We 've been
using it to provide the official images for our IaaS public cloud for at
least 2 years.

Your feedback is more than welcome!

On behalf of the Synnefo development team,
Nikos

[1] https://www.synnefo.org/
[2] https://code.google.com/p/ganeti/