Bundling Debian image for OpenStack

This article explains how to create a Debian 6 image on KVM for uploading it to the image store on OpenStack Diablo.  I have used KVM running on Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit server for creation of the image.

The first step would be to create a qcow2 image. This will represent the main HDD of the virtual machine, so make sure to give it as much space as you will need.

kvm-img create -f qcow2 debian.img 5G

Start the Virtual Machine booting from the CD using the following command.

kvm -m 512 -cdrom debian-6.0.1a-amd64-CD-1.iso -drive file=debian.img,if=virtio,index=0 -boot d -net nic -net user -nographic -vnc :1

Connect to the Virtual Machine through VNC (use display number :1).For Example, where 10.10.10.1 is the IP address of the host machine.

vncviewer 10.10.10.1 :1

Select SSH server, Curl and other packages needed. Once the installation is over shutdown the Virtual Machine and boot the Virtual Machine  from  Hard Drive.

kvm -m 512 -drive file=debian.img,if=virtio,index=0,boot=on -boot c -net nic -net user -nographic -vnc :1

Do the necessary changes needed for the image. For key injection add the following lines in the file /etc/rc.local.

mkdir -p /root/.ssh
echo >> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
curl -m 10 -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-keys/0/openssh-key | grep 'ssh-rsa' >> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
echo "AUTHORIZED_KEYS:"
echo "************************"
cat /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
echo "************************"

Also remove the network persistence rules from /etc/udev/rules.d as their presence will result in the network interface in the instance coming up as an interface other than eth0.

rm -rf /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

Shutdown the Virtual Machine. Upload the image to OpenStack using the following command

cloud-publish-image amd64 debian.img debianbucket

The following output shows that the image has been successfully uploaded.

ami-00000001 debianbucket/debian.img.manifest.xml

Verify whether the instance boots from the uploaded image.

euca-run-instances ami-00000001 -k mykey -t m1.tiny