I’m pleased to announce Marcus Schäfer has just made possible to build docker images with KIWI.

For those who never heard about it, KIWI is a tool which creates Linux systems for both physical and virtual machines. It can create openSUSE, SUSE and other types of Linux distributions.

Update: I changed the required version of kiwi and the openSUSE 13.1 template. Kiwi just received some improvements which do no longer force the image to include the lxc package.

Why is this important?

As you might know Docker has already its build system which provides a really easy way to create new images. However these images must be based on existing ones, which leads to the problem of creating the 1st parent image. That’s where KIWI comes to the rescue.

Indeed Kiwi can be used to build the openSUSE/SUSE/whatever docker images that are going to act as the foundation blocks of other ones.

Requirements

Docker support has been added to KIWI 5.06.87. You can find this package inside of the Virtualization:Appliances project on OBS.

Install the kiwi and the kiwi-doc packages on your system. Then go to the /usr/share/doc/packages/kiwi/examples/ directory where you will find a simple openSUSE 13.1 template.

Building the system

Just copy the whole /usr/share/doc/packages/kiwi/examples/suse-13.1/suse-docker-container directory to another location and make your changes.

The heart of the whole image is the config.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<image schemaversion="6.1" name="suse-13.1-docker-guest">
  <description type="system">
    <author>Flavio Castelli</author>
    <contact>fcastelli@suse.com</contact>
    <specification>openSUSE 13.1 docker image</specification>
  </description>
  <preferences>
    <type image="docker" container="os131">
      <machine>
        <vmdisk/>
        <vmnic interface="eth0" mode="veth"/>
      </machine>
    </type>
    <version>1.0.0</version>
    <packagemanager>zypper</packagemanager>
    <rpm-check-signatures>false</rpm-check-signatures>
    <rpm-force>true</rpm-force>
    <locale>en_US</locale>
    <keytable>us.map.gz</keytable>
    <hwclock>utc</hwclock>
    <timezone>US/Eastern</timezone>
  </preferences>
  <users group="root">
    <user password="$1$wYJUgpM5$RXMMeASDc035eX.NbYWFl0" home="/root" name="root"/>
  </users>
  <repository type="yast2">
    <source path="opensuse://13.1/repo/oss/"/>
  </repository>
  <packages type="image">
    <package name="coreutils"/>
    <package name="iputils"/>
  </packages>
  <packages type="bootstrap">
    <package name="filesystem"/>
    <package name="glibc-locale"/>
    <package name="module-init-tools"/>
  </packages>
</image>

This is a really minimal image which contains just a bunch of packages.

The first step is the creation of the image’s root system:

kiwi -p /usr/share/doc/packages/kiwi/examples/suse-13.1/suse-docker-container \
     --root /tmp/myimage

The next step compresses the file system of the image into a single tarball:

    kiwi --create /tmp/myimage --type docker -d /tmp/myimage-result

The tarball can be found under /tmp/myimage-result. This can be imported into docker using the following command:

docker import - myImage < /path/to/myimage.tbz

The image named myImage is now ready to be used.

What’s next

In the next days I’ll make another blog post explaining how to build docker images using KIWI and the Open Build Service. This is a powerful combination which allows to achieve continuous delivery.

Stay tuned and have fun!

• The FanArt.TV extension depended on some Banshee API that hasn't been added yet to mainline. The patch to add it lived in bugzilla for a while, in a bug about a feature request to have images in the artist list. The reason for not committing the patch even if I had already reviewed it was because I was wary about it, since it allowed FanArt.TV to hook its ArtistList widget, but wouldn't be really extension friendly. What I mean is that if there was other extension that wanted to also attach a different ArtistList, it would conflict with FanArt extension when enabled at the same time. The ideal thing would be to expose this functionality as an extension point, so that if more than one extension attached a new kind of ArtistList widget, the user could switch between the two from the UI when both extensions were enabled. When I mentioned this in the bug, awesome Banshee-extension developer Frank Ziegler jumped in and created the extension interface necessary for this. I've been reviewing the patches in the last days (couldn't do it before because I really wanted to release 2.9.1 and 2.6.2 versions before landing this work) and I'll likely commit them this week.

• The FanART.TV extension uses Hyena's ListView widget to show images. This is the main widget that Banshee uses for showing the tracks in the main view. It's a great custom widget because it allows very fast rendering of data coming from an SQLite database, but it wasn't optimized for rendering images. The main disadvantage of it is in the case that images have different heights, because the ListView will just allocate a height for each row equal to the tallest of the images used. This means that the widget shown could be a bit ugly if you have many artists in your library and some of them have very differently sized images. Tomasz worked on this a bit, but couldn't finish it because of lack of time (we have a WIP patch). But fortunately this will be fixed this summer!

• Both SongKick and FanArt.TV don't implement caching yet. This is not only important to save bandwidth from the point of view of the client, but also from the point of view of the server! (We could even violate their ToS if we didn't implement this, IIRC.) Fortunately this will be fixed this summer!

• SongKick extension provides several ways to discover gigs: searching by city, by artist, etc. It even suggests you artists extracted from your library that composed songs which you marked with a high rating! But IMO this is not enough, SongKick extension should even be smarter and query ahead of time looking for your favorite artists *and* near your area (doing the latter via GeoLocation). Fortunately this will be fixed this summer! (and we will use Gnome infrastructure for it)

• I got my house refurbished in the last months, which has been such a long planning endeavour, and a real stressful PITA while it was being done.
• Before the above started, and after it was finished, I had to move, so that's 2 moves! (I hate moving)
• I've been kind of busy in regards to Gnome-related contributions: we released Banshee 2.6.2, GStreamer-Sharp 0.99.0, Banshee 2.9.1, and a big etcetera (including pre-mentoring for GSoC! more about that in a subsequent post).

• Hylke Bons, sparkleshare creator, Red Hat designer.
• Mirco Bauer, smuxi creator and debian developer (mono packager).
• Jo Shields, debian developer (mono packager), Collabora sysadmin.
• Robert Nordan, Pinta contributor.
• Jared Jennings, Tomboy contributor.
• Stephen Shaw, ex-Novell coworker (build developer), and currently at Xamarin. (Yes, I was Stephen's team-mate when at Novell, but had never met him in person!)
• Stefan Hammer, Tomboy contributor and hackfest local-host.
• Timo Dörr, Tomboy and Banshee contributor, GSoC student.
• Stephan Sundermann, GSoC student for GStreamerSharp and Bindinator.

• GStreamerSharp 0.10.x releases were not compatible with GStreamer 1.x releases, so this had to be fixed soon. However, much of the architecture of this old version of the bindings used many manually crafted binding code.
• Stephan, by using the new Bindinator (a GObjectIntrospection metadata parser that outputs GAPI metadata, that allows generating .NET bindings, created by Andreia Gaita) in his GSoC, created a better foundation for the new bindings.
• He targetted GI metadata from GStreamer 1.0 and 1.2 versions (the jump from 0.10 to 1.0 was a big and not easy leap, since lots of APIs were modified and deprecated).
• We needed to polish them enough to make Banshee be able to consume them without glitches.

The GNOME Foundation, providers of the GNOME desktop

The University of Vienna and the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry, our venue sponsors

Norkart AS, Norway’s premier supplier of Geographic Information Systems and related consulting

Novacoast IT, Professional Services and Product Development

 

Another openSUSE Conference, another Country, but the same awesomeness. I attended the openSUSE Conference in the amazing city of Dubrovnik (more commonly known as King’s Landing), and it was another spell binding experience. Right from the talks, presentations, people (I cant stress on this one enough) to the location, everything was impeccable. I sit down to pen my thoughts at another experience, and memories which I will cherish. There was plenty to enjoy, learn, discuss at the conference, which lived upto its tagline – ‘The Strength to Change’. I highlight some of my experiences in this rather lengthy post.

The Location:

The location was just spectacular. I have been a ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ and ‘Game of Thrones’ fan for quite some time, and had a vivid image of what King’s Landing would look like. It lived up perfectly to its name. I think Dubrovnik was ‘meant’ to play host to King’s Landing in the series. Visiting the Walls, Fort Lovrijenac (The Red Keep) felt like I had landed inside the world of Westeros.

The Conference was held in the University of Dubrovnik. It was a pretty nice location, very close to Oldtown in a nice, peaceful location.

Video Team:

This was something new to me. I helped around with the video team in mixing videos, and handling the camera for some of the talks. I had never done this before, and Christopher Hoffman gave me a great hands on. It was a pretty nice experience, working with Stephan Barth, Dubravko Jakovljević, Sarah, Jurgen, Marcel. I hope to be helping around with the video team at the next oSC as well.

The Presentations:

As always, the presentations were top notch. Mentioning some which I really liked

• Design and Branding – Kenneth Wimmer. This one cleared up some confusion there was with the openSUSE artwork. I really like the cool and funky new Geekos
• Almost every talk by Jos Poortvliet
• SLE and openSUSE by Jan Weber
• YaST Module from Scratch by Josef Reidinger (This one was cool!!!)
• oSC15 by Bruno Friedmann
• The upstream view of MySQL – Norvald H. Ryeng
• The TSP talks by Izabel and Ancor

The Townhall Meeting:

I missed a part of the townhall partly due  to the incessant rain, but I got in time for the bulk of the discussion. The burning issues in the townhall were related to the openSUSE Release Cycle, and how Factory fits in. The discussion was pretty interesting, though the outcome will probably be clear in the current weeks. As of now, openSUSE 13.2 is slated for a November release.

openSUSE Summit:

At oSC13 in Thessaloniki, I had met Yan Sun, where she had put forth the idea for an openSUSE Summit in Asia. She put forth the proposal to the board in the last conference, though due to some issues, the dates kept shifting, though the event had been approved. Now, it looks like the event would be held in October/November in Beijing. I had a good discussion with her on topics such as talks, presentations and the TSP, which would be a vital cog for the conference. I am hoping to attend the event and give a presentation. Lets see how that works out. Fingers crossed on this one

Anahuac Gil:

Yes…I had to devote a whole section to this amazing person from Brazil, and one who made the conference even more memorable. I first met him at the hotel with Izabel, and we got down to talking. The discussions were amazing on talks from our diverse, but to a certain extent, similar cultures to the evil aspects of Google (and the nexus with the NSA :D). For a whole hour, he shed light on Cuba, which was pretty amazing. Whenever the guy talks, people listen intently. I enjoyed talking to him, and his banter of ‘You are TOO SLOW man!!!’ has stayed with me. Reaffirms my belief that conferences are a great place to meet people and understand different cultures.

The openSUSE Party:

Geekos love to party…plain and simple. After a hard and long conference, we had the main party at Eastwest Beach Club Banje, on the Adriatic shore. It was quite a picturesque place. The food was pretty nice, though I could hardly find stuff I could eat (considering I dont eat meat). Still I had a fun time interacting with people. I met with Peter Czanik, who works with Balabit Security, an organization we are collaborating with in the Google Summer of Code. We had a lengthy discussion on topics ranging from Hungary, Balabit, GSoC to name a few.

The best part of the party was certainly the dedication to Hans de Raadt. He could not make it to the conference, and he is going to organize the next oSC at the Hague. Netherlands. The Geekos gave an awesome tribute to Hans

I got together with a group of Greekos, and talked about the Google Summer of Code. IMO, Greekos are really the most passionate community within the openSUSE Community. I am hoping they participate next year in GSoC

Craziest and most fun part – Geekos exchanging ID Tags in football style. I have no idea who ended up with mine. I now have Tomas Cech’s ID tag instead of mine

Travel Support Program (TSP):

The Travel Support program has been integral for me attending the conference. It is an awesome tool which enables contributors to attend events which help openSUSE as a project grow. Being sponsored to the openSUSE Conference is a great feeling, and urges you to contribute more towards this awesome project. The talk discussing the openSUSE Travel Support Program by Izabel laid out some clear points

• Contribute. It is not a free ride.
• We want to support as many people as possible, but you have to ask for help
• It is not just attending the event in the shadows. Get Involved. It is as much ‘during’ the event, than it is ‘before’
• If you have been sponsored to the conference, remember that it is at the cost of someone else. Make it count…

Prior to the Trip:

This one perhaps warrants a separate blog post, as a guide on how NOT to travel, but I am going with the flow. I made a hash of my reservations, which almost cost me attending the conference.

• I booked flight tickets through Germany, without realizing that I would need at least an airport transit visa. I assumed I would get a German visa, which would allow me to enter Croatia as well. The Embassy of Germany rejected my application, and I was stuck in Limbo for some time. I specially went to Delhi to apply for a Croatian visa, and got it a few days before the trip, leaving me no time to apply for the German visa
• I canceled the tickets through Germany, and in panic, booked tickets going through Austria, without realizing that there is a 20 layover in Vienna, which would have been intolerable, and that I would potentially overstay on my visa.
• I tried looking for an alternative, and was on the verge of booking tickets to Moscow, only to see the price double while I blinked.
• I ultimately ended up canceling the ticket through Austria, and booking through Istanbul, which was a ‘sensible’ route, though it involved a flight plan which went: Bangalore -> Mumbai -> Istanbul -> Zagreb -> Dubrovnik. Travel Hell!!! I am sick of flights…
• I missed the last day of the conference due to these issues, and also ended up spending some more on extending my hotel reservation, which was for a day less.

As the dust settles on the openSUSE Conference, I can only reflect on the awesomeness over the past week. It has really left a lasting impression over me. Thanks to the Geekos around the world, who make the openSUSE Project a success