Sun Dec 15 2013 06:01:39 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

The obvious win would be to evolve the standard build tools to the point where you can go "make appliance" and end up with an .OVF containing your application plus just enough of the OS to start it.

Like a virt-builder thingie?

http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/new-tool-virt-builder/

http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/virt-builder-making-vms-in-around-30-seconds/

Wed Jan 01 2014 02:04:31 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

Like a virt-builder thingie?

virt-builder deploys an operating system plus any applications you specify.
I'm thinking even more barebones than that. More like, not even a full POSIX userland, basically just libc and init and enough to get the IP stack started and your application running.

Virt-builder to deploy a custom lfs base image?

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

You sound like you are talking more "containers" and the madness that follows if you want to go smaller.

Have not tried Docker, but came across it again in one of those weekly newsletters:

https://github.com/dotcloud/docker

Not sure how complicated the proggie you want to ship is.

Duh.  I should have known.  I just thought you might be messing around with something else for work or other endeavors. 

How about using the virt-builder and add Citadel after boot via something like Fabric to script changes / updates to your "golden image"?

http://docs.fabfile.org

I use Fabric as it is a nice Python library that I can build up my own library of often used bits of code to be re-used later to do common tasks (other folks seem to share as well and even write specific libs for sysadmin work etc...)

If Python / Fabric is not your bag, there are many other language bindings to do the same sort of thing in language X.  Let me know if you find a fun one :-)

Fri Jan 03 2014 17:45:01 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

The program to be shipped is Citadel, silly goose. Checking out Docker now ...

Ok, so it's still an application container, not something that can build a full VM ... but it still offers some interesting ideas that might be usable.

there was s.b. on IRC who did docker experiments with the citadel .debs

However, at that point in time there were major problems getting configs into the container in some way then editing text files and restart the container.

they need to come up with a solution howto run debconf from a container with user interfacing which wasn't possible about half a year ago.

the container would fire up with some random generated hostname which would become the citadel nodename. It also would have UTC timezone - always.

Not being able to interactively run citadel setup also took away all esay ways to fix the system resulting from a container deployment.

Well, make citadel-setup remote-capable, kind of a puppetmaster. ;)

Sat Jan 04 2014 07:10:21 PM EST from the_mgt @ Uncensored

Well, make citadel-setup remote-capable, kind of a puppetmaster. ;)

Interesting thought, but I would think finding the "works for all software" solution to the existing solutions better than taking on yet another role for Citadel that is far outside the norm.  I could very well be wrong though, as the coders for Citadel are quite clever :-)

I would be quite interested in anybody that finds something that fits the bill better than a full VM and setup via scripted ssh session.

Sun Jan 05 2014 01:57:13 EST from ax25 @ Uncensored

Sat Jan 04 2014 07:10:21 PM EST from the_mgt @ Uncensored

Well, make citadel-setup remote-capable, kind of a puppetmaster. ;)

Interesting thought, but I would think finding the "works for all software" solution to the existing solutions better than taking on yet another role for Citadel that is far outside the norm.  I could very well be wrong though, as the coders for Citadel are quite clever :-)

I would be quite interested in anybody that finds something that fits the bill better than a full VM and setup via scripted ssh session.

well... with not having a plaintext config citadel is sort of an exception here already.

however, the biggest advantage of using debian above other distributions is the lots of work which was put into the debconf system - and not being able to utilize this makes that effort nonsense and better use fedora or whatever.

Here we then again have the troubles of not being able to run setup - one could think of having a sourceable shellscript into the initscript which then calls setup & starts citserver.

The config is a hex-file instead of plain text, isn't it? What is the trouble, writing a hexfile into the container?

I admit to have no clue about the whole process, though. Just wondering.

Sun Jan 05 2014 05:33:01 AM ESTfrom dothebart @ Uncensored

well... with not having a plaintext config citadel is sort of an exception here already.

however, the biggest advantage of using debian above other distributions is the lots of work which was put into the debconf system - and not being able to utilize this makes that effort nonsense and better use fedora or whatever.

Here we then again have the troubles of not being able to run setup - one could think of having a sourceable shellscript into the initscript which then calls setup & starts citserver.

Mon Jan 06 2014 07:50:40 EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

well... with not having a plaintext config citadel is sort of an
exception here already.

At some point in the not too distant future the config file is going to become XML. That would allow a lot of third party tools to manipulate it.

objegction your highness, yaml is the way to go. Human readable & editable in the end plus ready made parsers & dumpers widely available, highlight modes for all common editors.

printf'ing xml out sucks and destroys users edits.