Installation guide

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Managing EZ Templates
Creating a Local Repository
Along with using pre-configured repositories, you can create local repositories and configure for
handling packages for your EZ templates. Organizing your own local repositories results in less
bandwidth consumption and rapid software updates to Containers. You may also want to build a
local repository if OS vendors or third-party software developers set up repositories that are not
compatible with the vzpkg tool.
Note: The vzpkg tool supports all the repositories that can be used by the yum (version 2.4.0 and
higher) and apt utilities. For detailed information on these utilities, see their man pages.
The process of setting up a local repository includes the following main steps:
1 Obtaining software packages comprising the given Linux distribution. The easiest way of doing
it is to copy the necessary packages from your distribution disks or the OS vendor's website.
2 Creating the metadata repository from a set of the copied software packages with the
createrepo utility. This step can be omitted if you are going to create a repository which will
be a mirror of a public repository.
3 Making your repository accessible for Containers users. You can let Container users access
your repository in one of the following ways:
• By using the http protocol. In this case the repository should represent a website
containing software packages for the EZ template.
• By using the ftp protocol. In this case the repository should represent an FTP site
containing software packages for the EZ template.
• By using the file protocol. In this case the repository should represent a directory path
(e.g. on your local Node) containing software packages for the EZ template.
While the first two protocols allow you to remotely (i.e. from Nodes located in other networks)
access the created repository, the third one can be used within your local Node only.
Example 1: Creating a Local Repository for Fedora 16
Let us assume that you want to build a local package repository for the Fedora 16 OS EZ template
where the RPM packages for Fedora 16 will be downloaded and stored. The repository will be
used by Nodes from both your local and other networks, and it will allow downloading packages
through the http protocol. In our example, we presume the following:
• The package repository will be located inside Container 101. You can use any OS template to
base the Container on.
Note: We recommend that you always place your local repositories inside separate Containers not to
compromise the Node security. In particular, it is of significant importance if you are going to provide
access to your repositories through the http and ftp protocols.