User`s guide

Advanced Tasks 179
Using Customized OS EZ Template
Let us first start with making a customized base OS EZ template which can then be used to
create Containers with a set of application already tuned to meet your demands. To make such a
template, you should perform the following operations:
1 Create a metafile that will serve as the basis for your customized base OS EZ template.
Notes:
1. Detailed information on how to create metafiles is given in the Parallels Server 4 Bare
MetalTemplates Management Guide.
2. While creating a metafile for your new OS EZ template, you should make sure that the
value of either the %osname parameter or the %version parameter in the metafile differs
from the names or versions of all base OS EZ templates installed on the server. So, if the
base RHEL4 OS EZ template is already installed on your server, these values cannot be
simultaneously set to redhat and as4.
2 Create one or more scripts that will be executed on different stages of the OS EZ template
lifecycle and customize your applications to meet your needs. For example, you can create a
postinstall script with the name of post_install.bash and make it perform a number
of customization operations on some application included in the OS EZ template after
installing this application inside your Container.
3 Create a customized OS EZ template by running the vzmktmpl utility and passing the
corresponding options to it. So, you can use the --post-install option and specify the
path to the post_install.bash script from the example above to make an OS EZ
template that will customize your application after installing it inside your Container.
Note: The full list of options allowing you to specify what scripts are to be executed on what
stage of the EZ template lifecycle is provided in the vzmktmpl subsection of the Parallels
Command Line Reference Guide.
4 Install the customized OS EZ template on the server by running the rpm -i command.
5 Cache the created OS EZ template by running the vzpkg create cache command.
Detailed information on how you can do it is provided in the Parallels Server 4 Bare Metal
Templates Management Guide.
6 Create a Container based on the OS EZ template.
For example, to create a Container which will run Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (RHEL 4) and
have the customized mysql and apache applications installed inside it right after its creation,
you can do the following:
1 Create a metafile for the RHEL 4 OS EZ template, name it, for example,
rhel_4_customized.metafile, and save in the /root/rhel4 directory on the
server.
2 Make a script that will perform a number of custom operations after applying the mysql
and apache application EZ templates to the Container, and name it
post_install.bash.
3 Copy the script to the /root/rhel4 directory on the server.
4 Execute the following command on the server to create the RHEL 4 OS EZ template:
# vzmktmpl /root/rhel4/rhel_4_customized.metafile \