Prebuilt Vanilla Xen Images - Various Operating Systems

[zottffssen]

I found a site that hosts a bunch of different Xen ready images with several different options for the guest OS. There are some free images, although the most recent releases require a donation (just download an older release for free and update it).

 

This link contains all the free downloads:

http://stacklet.com/downloads/images/public

 

Note: I am not associated or affiliated with this site in any way.

[ironicbadger]

They are completely vanilla images, so if that's what you want go for it!

[doorunrun]

Just prior to IconicBadger's Arch VM build I downloaded a "free" Arch image from Stacklet. I was "just a little" out of date but it turned out to be a PIA to update. The organization of Arch's files had changed and so updating became a major rework of file locations even with it being a "rolling release." It would have been easier to build from scratch. Luckily IB's image showed up.

It seems to me if you download an older image you're going to need to update it anyway and that usually is a large download as well. I think it's worth the effort to learn to build them on your own.

 

 

 

[zottffssen]

Just prior to IconicBadger's Arch VM build I downloaded a "free" Arch image from Stacklet. I was "just a little" out of date but it turned out to be a PIA to update. The organization of Arch's files had changed and so updating became a major rework of file locations even with it being a "rolling release." It would have been easier to build from scratch. Luckily IB's image showed up.

It seems to me if you download an older image you're going to need to update it anyway and that usually is a large download as well. I think it's worth the effort to learn to build them on your own.

 

You're right, I wanted something lighter than Ironic's image and I also wanted to start from scratch just so I could set everything up from vanilla. I downloaded the 2013.05 release of Arch and you're right, there is a major upgrade that needs to be done. That is only caused however, by the movement of all binaries to /usr/bin. Once the 2014.01 image becomes free to download I believe that it will be incredibly easy to update from there.

[smakovits]

If you want vanilla and small, wouldn't it be just as easy to install from scratch?

[doorunrun]

It certainly is easier to have the image right there ready to go! My plan is to build an Ubuntu one and it seems there's a few extra steps involved getting the right PV kernel to start out with.

 

Edit: OK, I caved and I'm trying their ubuntu.13-04.x86-64.20130424.img. It's the same one Tom used and posted about in the OP of the unRAID-6.0beta3 announcement. I want to try NzbGet and SickBeard on it to compare it to Arch. The image has Xfce desktop which, I guess, I could strip but for now it's a QUICK start!

[smakovits]

Everything has its place I guess.  It all comes down to the time you want to spend.

[doorunrun]

I've been working with that Ubuntu 13.04 image from Stacklet; it turns out I'm using the console-only version and not the xfce one Tom used. But, updating to 13.10 was a lot quicker than I thought. Adding Nzbget and Sickbeard was more of a challenge than "apt-get-install-done." We should all be so thankful IronicBadger provided the Arch VM image and repo!!

 

The annoying thing about SB under Arch was not being able to restart from its web interface. It stops OK, but can't seem to restart on its own. Running under Ubuntu, SB does that without troubles.

 

Once we're outside the warm/fuzzy world of Arch, installing and configuring them takes a bit of work as I couldn't find a great webpage to guide me. And so having this forum and guides is a great resource!

 

One other thing to point out is the lack of delay in establishing the VM's network connection. In Arch it's about 30-60 seconds. Ubuntu is right there; however there is some delay setting up the ext4 drive at boot time, but still pretty reasonable.

[NAS]

Someone explain to me why using one of these is better than the minutes it takes to install your own from a know trusted iso? And why on earth would you pay for the privilege?

 

what am i missing?

 

Edit: sure if your benefiting from some application level work like ironicbadgers excellent distros but a vanilla OS? lost

[doorunrun]

Someone explain to me why using one of these is better than the minutes it takes to install your own from a know trusted iso? And why on earth would you pay for the privilege?

 

I agree with you.....but, for me with limited bandwidth downloading this image was 175mb, most ISO's are bigger. The guides I've seen on creating DOMu's go for the network install which means getting those starter files downloaded and loaded locally.  I'm not sure I understand the differences between building a PV versus HVM guest, but getting PV supported kernel was my goal. I'm a noob at this and I thought I'd build from scratch; this seems faster. But pay for it....NOT!

[zottffssen]

Someone explain to me why using one of these is better than the minutes it takes to install your own from a know trusted iso? And why on earth would you pay for the privilege?

 

what am i missing?

 

Edit: sure if your benefiting from some application level work like ironicbadgers excellent distros but a vanilla OS? lost

 

Because slightly older releases are free and saves some time setting stuff up from scratch. The arch release I downloaded was also 228MB compared to Ironic's 477MB. Why do everything from scratch when you can save yourself some time?

[NAS]

By the time you patch it you might as well have downloaded the latest iso and made a Vm you can 100% trust.

 

Im sure there is a perception of saving time but it has to be measured in minutes. madness I say madness.

 

Ironic releases are anything but bloaty that extra 200mbit is likely just patches and cache.

 

I am not hating on this just for the heck of it. It sounds like a good resource if you want to play with some older OS's for a laugh but why skimp on a few minutes of setup for a VM you could conceivably run for years?

 

 

[ironicbadger]

By the time you patch it you might as well have downloaded the latest iso and made a Vm you can 100% trust.

 

Yup.

[aptalca]

Here's my experience with stacklet ubuntu xfce image

 

Only older releases are free, which is fine because you can upgrade them.

Download speeds on their site are atrocious. I averaged 30KB/s on a 20Mbit/s max cable connection. It took me hours to download the image. And then the download failed within the last MB in both google chrome on win 7 and wget through unraid. I finally used FileZilla and it was able to dl completely. That was more than 6 hours spent waiting.

 

I followed Tom's directions to install, which were straightforward.

 

The OS is less than vanilla. I now hate xfce because I had a lot of issues. More than half the icons were missing. The panel crashed and then never started at login again even when I manually started it and saved the session. I created a new user, but when I logged in, there was no panel, and even right click did not do anything, just a blank page. I had to shutdown and reboot externally. Also there was no (gui) option to change the time zone, so it was stuck at Greenwich time.

 

I practically had to do everything in command line and the xfce gui was totally useless. I used ubuntu in the past, which was a full OS. But this was far from it with only half a gui.

 

Installing sab, sick, couch, etc. turned out to be a pain. I hit roadblocks when I tried to follow guides for ubuntu, and instead do certain things the kubuntu way (I am not a linux guru, still trying to figure out the basics)

 

So I gave up and switched to ironicbadger's ArchVM. I figured since I had to do everything in command line in ubuntu/xfce anyway, it wouldn't be much different in a console only Arch linux. Things were much more straightforward and especially installing sw like plex is a breeze thanks to ironicbadger's repo.

 

Just my $0.02