JeOS: Just enough OS Project

This project is focused on delivering examples of heavily reduced, text-based, headless server-oriented forms of the Sun-managed OpenSolaris distribution such that developers and administrators can more easily realize application-tailored installations of OpenSolaris in virtual appliance, cloud and bare metal environments.  

This project is not concerned with fostering a new distribution of OpenSolaris.  Rather, it is helping to drive delivery of a new readily usable form of the existing Sun-managed distribution that complements the current desktop-oriented Live Media form of delivery.

The two primary areas of investigation include:

• JeOS Building Block VM Images: Delivery of example JeOS building block virtual machine (VM) images that can be used as starting points for virtual appliance and VM template developers. Examples of how to build these images can help developers and administrators better understand how to construct their own installations tailored toward the needs of their applications.
• Reduced Installation Profiles: Developing examples of reduced installation profiles and integration of these profiles with the Automated Installer and Distro/VM Constructor.  Includes providing feedback on not only the reduced installation profiles and installation tools, but also on package refactoring.

The people initiating this project have been responsible for helping the Sun middleware and database group offer VM templates that leverage OpenSolaris as the underlying deployment OS.  Their motivation is to help the OpenSolaris community realize a set of ready-to-use, building block VM images to support delivery of VM templates.  See the GlassFish Web Space Server VM Template for an example.

• Try the 2009.06 JeOS Prototype VM Images
• Auto Install Examples for JeOS Style Installations
• Early Draft of Base Install Profile Metapackages
• Web Space Server VM Template

Try the 2009.06 JeOS Prototype VM Images

If you'd like to try out a JeOS build block example of the Sun-managed OpenSolaris distribution, we prepared easy to use VM images on 10+ most popular Virtualization Platforms (including  for VirtualBox, VMware,Virtual PC, Hyper-V, Parallels, Ldoms, Xen/KVM/QEMU based platforms), here you can download one of the OpenSolaris 2009.06 JeOS Prototype VM images ,  Rudolf (VirtualGuru) also prepare in his blog 10 simple JeOS Prototype Usage Samples and 7 steps of Virtual Template (Virtual Appliance) creation for your inspiration.

Why do we refer to this image as a "building block"?  Since there's no one size fits all JeOS example, this image can be viewed as a pre-installed, lightly pre-configured starting point for you to customize according to the needs of your application.  By adding and removing packages and making configuration changes, you'll end up with your own JeOS installation of the Sun-managed OpenSolaris distribution.

Auto Install Examples for JeOS Style Installations

The JeOS project has published several examples of how to realize your own JeOS-style installations:

Installing Heavily Reduced Profile of OpenSolaris

Based on build 126 of OpenSolaris, Chris Kampmeier has published several blog articles covering how to use an experimental form of a reduced installation profile along with the Automated Installer and VirtualBox.  Here's the current AI manifest. See the list of features included in the early draft of the base profile.  This example results in heavily reduced, text-based, headless server installations of OpenSolaris.  Anyone can use this example to install from scratch their own JeOS to suite the needs of their particular application.

There are no automated post install configuration steps in these examples.  See Rudolf Kutina's richer JeOS building block example in the next section for more sophisticated post install steps.

• OpenSolaris Automated Installer with JeOS and VirtualBox
• Initial Experiments with Base Installation Profile
• Establishing Reduced Package Repository
• 7-minute Installs: Using Local, Reduced Repository
• Using Reduced Installation Profile Metapackage

Creating the JeOS Building Block VM Images

The source for Rudolf Kutina's use of Auto Installer to install OpenSolaris 2009.06, perform a series of post-install configuration steps including hardening of the OS and generating VM images has been published in our project source repository.  This source was used to generate the 2009.06 JeOS prototype VM images.  

Several files of primary interest in this example include:

• The AI manifest used to create the base JeOS installations.  This manifest contains many more features that the bare minimum base installation profile example above.  
• Orchestration of the installation and post-install configuration are represented in the JeOS-install.sh script.
• Key post-install configuration steps are carried out in JeOS-postconfig.sh.

Early Draft of Base Install Profile Metapackages

A very early draft of a specification for base install profile metapackages has been made available.  As this draft matures, it will eventually be submitted to the install, pkg(5) and other projects for further input and review.  Our hope is that some form of the metapackages defined in the specification will become a formal part of the Sun-managed OpenSolaris distribution.

Companion experimental package and Automated Installer manifests for use with the OpenSolaris Automated Installer has also been published.

Web Space Server VM Template

The Sun GlassFish Web Space Server VM Template is a VM image-based form of Sun's portal server offering.  It uses the 2008.11 release of the JeOS prototype as its deployment OS.  Try out this VM template if you'd like to see OpenSolaris JeOS in action. Get the Web Space Server VM Template