Arch VM idea (it might even work on real hardware!)

dav7 · 2008-10-14 06:38:48

I had an idea recently that might be interesting: a virtual machine image for Arch that, once you power it on, it immediately goes online (which shouldn't be too hard since there are only a few virtual machine programs out there, so not many network cards (and sound chipsets, video chipsets, etc) that detection would need to be provided for) and configures the latest version of Arch, no matter how old the VM image is.

Since we're in a VM we can do pretty much whatever we want within (or without ) reason, so we could make the system very "data-invasive" without much worry.

With this in mind, we can, with a little work, completely get over the huge problem of "this VM has too old an arch installation on it to work with the latest updates". Here's how it might work: we boot a tiny (16MB) partition (which won't contain an Arch install, for reasons I explain a bit later) at the first startup, which boots up, downloads the latest version of pacman-static, copies it over and chroots into the soon-to-be-arch-installation environment, and uses pacman to download base. Note that the VM disk would already contain an appropriate partition layout with a handful of directories such as the aforementioned cache directory, so we wouldn't need to create those.

With base installed, we edit grub's current configuration, reboot to the new installation and BAM, you have a fully, fully up to date system.

The idea above was originally aimed at the situation of whether the installation was too old, but I thought "why not use this method no matter what?" and it quickly grew into quite an interesting idea from there.

As I typed the title of this post my PC did one of its classic access-the-HDD-for-0.8-seconds-and-lock-up-while-doing-so moments causing me become a bit disoriented with backspace and end up typing "ArchVM"... good name perhaps? My computer hasn't inspired me like that before!

This idea might be a good idea for real hardware, perhaps for a recovery partition, or a very, very, VERY, different install CD.

Lastly, this couldn't contain an Arch installation IMHO because it might mess up the new install, and also because I think Arch couldn't very easily be made to go that small.

What do you think?

-dav7

Last edited by dav7 (2008-10-14 06:46:38)

robmaloy · 2008-10-14 08:25:42

what about

echo "pacman -Syu" >> /etc/rc.local

?

edit: make it non-interactive

Last edited by robmaloy (2008-10-14 08:27:29)

dav7 · 2008-10-14 08:54:20

That could work, but then there's the issue of pacman going "stale" and not being able to operate without "help", as described in this post.

-dav7

Last edited by dav7 (2008-10-14 08:54:52)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-10-14 06:38:48

Arch VM idea (it might even work on real hardware!)

#2 2008-10-14 08:25:42

Re: Arch VM idea (it might even work on real hardware!)

#3 2008-10-14 08:54:20

Re: Arch VM idea (it might even work on real hardware!)

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