Templater

A collection of scripts to create and install a VM in oVirt, and then create a template based off of that VM.

Procedure

• A temporary VM is created with the specified name, OS type and MAC address.
• The VM is network booted and an automated install is expected to take place - this will require functioning network boot infrastructure and the automated install method for the distro to be configured (for example, a Kickstart script for RHEL derivatives). The VM is expected to power off after install and not reboot.
• The VM is powered on and the script waits for an SSH connection. It is expected that the user's SSH key is inserted into the root user of the VM during install.
• sysprep files are copied to the VM and the script is run on the VM. The sysprep script is expected to power off the VM when it has finished.
• The script waits for the VM to be shut down and then creates the template from the VM.
• The temporary VM is removed.

Requirements

• Python 2
• Python oVirt SDK 3.6 pip install ovirt-engine-sdk-python
• Python Paramiko pip install paramiko
• PyYAML pip install pyyaml

The oVirt SDK must be version 3.6.x, the 4.0 release line contains changes which break this script. At the time of writing, PyPI still contains the working version. In case that goes away or updates to the 4.0 line, the old release should always be available on the oVirt resources server.

Install

No OS packages are available yet.

$ git clone https://github.com/fubralimited/ovirt-templater.git

Usage

• Rename the config.yaml.example file to config.yaml and customise as required. See the Configuration section of this README for details about the available options.
• Run ./make-templates --help to view available command line options.

Configuration

Most options can be configured on the command line but a configuration file is also available. Distro definitions are required in the config file, these cannot be passed in on the command line.

Each distro in the configuration file is an item in the list containing entries for the name, MAC address, IP address and OS type used for the template VM. The MAC address is set on the template VM and so can be used to configure the network boot options on your DHCP server as well as a static IP lease. The IP address will be used to connect to the VM once it is installed, so a static lease in your DHCP server is a good idea.

Additional options are available in the config file to set the host of the oVirt API, as well as the username and password used to connect to it.

The example configuration file shows some definitions for CentOS 6 and 7 installs.

Sysprep

All files in the files/distro/ directory will be copied to the VM at /tmp/sysprep/. A script in that directory must be called sysprep as that is executed on the VM after copying the files.

Example sysprep scripts are included for CentOS 6 and 7 installs. You may wish to customise or replace these.