KIWI Image System
The openSUSE KIWI Image System provides a complete operating system
image solution for Linux supported hardware platforms as well as
for virtualisation systems like Xen Qemu or VMware. The KIWI architecture was designed
as a two level system. The first stage, based on a valid
software package source, creates a so called physical extend
according to the provided image description. The second stage creates from
a required physical extend an operating system image. The result of the
second stage is called a logical extend or short an image.
A normal installation process is starting from a given installation source
and installs single pieces of software until the system is complete. During
this process there may be manual user intervention required. However an
operating system image represents an already completed installation
encapsulated as a file and optionally includes the configuration for a
specific task. Such an operating system starts working as soon as the
image has been brought to a system storage device no matter if this is a
volatile or non volatile storage. The process of creating an image takes
place without user interaction.
This means all requirements of the encapsulated system has to be fulfilled
before the image is created. According to this the so called
image description tree stores all the information needed to
create an image.
Features
- Distribution independent design
- Support for full virtual systems like VMware, Qemu
- Support for para-virtual systems like Xen
- Support for deploying images over the network
- Support for pre-installed OEM systems
- Support for USB-Stick systems
- Support for LiveCD/DVD systems
- Centralized image description based on XML
- Prebuild boot images for SUSE systems
- Prebuild PXE configuration usable with kiwi netboot images
- SUSE Linux on a 128MB flash card with a 45MB OS image.. yes that's possible :-)
- Supported architectures: x86 and x86_64
Sources
KIWI is hosted on berlios and
is developed under the terms of the GPL. Read more about the system design
of KIWI in kiwi.pdf and/or subscribe to the kiwi devel or kiwi users list(s)
Packages
-
RPM packages can be found in the Virtualization/Appliances project:
Download
© 2000, 2006 Marcus Schäfer
<marcus.schaefer@gmail.com>, Isny