Bundling Ubuntu Desktop Image with VNC access in UEC-10.04 (Lucid Lynx)

Creating the disk image

The following command creates the image of the virtual harddrive that KVM
emulates.

$ kvm-img create -f raw image.img 10G

Installing the VM

If Ubuntu 10.10 server is to be bundled, Install it in a VM using the following command

 $ sudo kvm -m 512 -cdrom ubuntu-10.04.1-Desktop-i386.iso
-drive file=image.img,if=scsi,index=0 -boot d -net nic -net user -nographic -vnc :0

The memory needed for the VM changed accordingly using the -m option from 512  to appropriate memory size needed Now connect to the VM using the following command

$ vncviewer A.B.C.D :0

Where A.B.C.D is the IP of the machine in which the VM is running After Connecting use the following steps to configure VNC server in the VM image

Install TightVNC-server

$ sudo apt-get install tightvncserver

Configuring TightVNC-server

Now to check the installation run the following command

$ vncserver

Enter and confirm the password
Edit the file ~/.vnc/xstatup and add the following line

gnome-session &

Create a file /etc/init.d /vncserver. Now edit the file and add the following lines

#!/bin/sh -e
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          vncserver
# Required-Start:    networking
# Default-Start:     S
# Default-Stop:      0 6
### END INIT INFO
PATH="$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin/"

# The Username:Group that will run VNC
export USER=""
#${RUNAS}

# The display that VNC will use
DISPLAY="1"

# Color depth (between 8 and 32)
DEPTH="16"

# The Desktop geometry to use.
#GEOMETRY="x"
#GEOMETRY="800x600"
GEOMETRY="1024x768"
#GEOMETRY="1280x1024"

# The name that the VNC Desktop will have.
NAME="my-vnc-server"

OPTIONS="-name ${NAME} -depth ${DEPTH} -geometry ${GEOMETRY} :${DISPLAY}"

. /lib/lsb/init-functions

case "$1" in
start)
 log_action_begin_msg "Starting vncserver for user '${USER}' on localhost:${DISPLAY}"
 su ${USER} -c "/usr/bin/vncserver ${OPTIONS}"
 ;;

stop)
 log_action_begin_msg "Stoping vncserver for user '${USER}' on localhost:${DISPLAY}"
 su ${USER} -c "/usr/bin/vncserver -kill :${DISPLAY}"
 ;;

restart)
 $0 stop
 $0 start
 ;;
esac

exit 0

Run the following command to make the file executable

 $ sudo  chmod +x /etc/init.d/vncserver 

Run the following command

$ sudo update-rc.d enable vncserver

Transferring the kernel and ramdisk to the host machine

The kernel and the ramdisk files of the VM are needed for registration with eucalyptus.
Hence use the following commands to transfer the files from VM to the host machine.

$ scp /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-server user@A.B.C.D:

$ scp /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-server user@A.B.C.D:

Removing the network persistent rules

Now remove the network persistent rules from /etc/udev/rules.d, so that the instance  always comes up with eth0 as the network interface, using the following command

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

Registering with UEC or Eucalyptus

Registering kernel image

Execute the following commands to bundle and register the kernel image (vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-server)

$ euca-bundle-image -i vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-server --kernel true

$ euca-upload-bundle -b mybucket -m /tmp/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-server.manifest.xml

$ euca-register mybucket/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-server.manifest.xml

Save the output produced by the last command above (eki-XXXXXXXX), which will be needed while registering the disk image.

Registering ramdisk image

Execute the following commands to bundle and register the ramdisk image (initrd.img-2.6.35-22-server)

$ euca-bundle-image -i  initrd.img-2.6.35-22-server --ramdisk true

$ euca-upload-bundle -b mybucket -m /tmp/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-server.manifest.xml

$ euca-register mybucket/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-server.manifest.xml

Save the output produced by the last command above (eri-XXXXXXXX), which will be needed while registering the disk image.

Registering disk image

Execute the following commands to bundle and register the ramdisk image (image.img)

$ euca-bundle-image -i image.img --kernel eki-XXXXXXXX --ramdisk eri-XXXXXXXX

$ euca-upload-bundle -b mybucket -m /tmp/image.img.manifest.xml

$ euca-register mybucket/image.img.manifest.xml

Replace eki-XXXXXXXX and eri-XXXXXXXX with the exact values you have saved earlier.

Checking the registration

To check whether registration has succeeded, use the following command

$ euca-describe-images

The output should be like

IMAGE   emi-70B70EC0    mybucket/image.img.manifest.xml                     admin   available        public  x86_64  machine
IMAGE   eri-A2BE13EC    mybucket/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-server.manifest.xml   admin    available       public  x86_64  ramdisk
IMAGE   eki-685F1306    mybucket/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-server.manifest.xml      admin    available       public  x86_64  kernel