[Catalyst] UPDATE: catalyst on vmware

[Jason Kohles]

On 4/19/06, moltar <moltar at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>
> One thing that really concerns me thus far is the size of the
> installation. Right now vmware image is at 2.4 GB! Even if I take out
> GUI stuff, it's still quite large. I am not sure of how it's best to
> distribute it. What do you suggest?
>

A few tips on distributing VMware images...
  * Make sure the guest is powered off when you are checking the size
     or packaging for distribution.  If the guest is powered on or paused
     there will be a memory image file in the directory, so you will waste
     some space storing your virtual machines current memory image.
  * The guests are generally pretty compressible -- right now I'm working
     with a RHEL4 image which is 1.65 gigs on disk, but zipped up it's
     about 670M.
  * Make sure you aren't configuring your virtual machines with any of
     these features, which take a lot more disk space...
     * Pre-allocated virtual file systems
     * Independent or persistent virtual disks
   * If using CDROM images to do the install, make sure they aren't
     being included in the VM directory
   * Delete any unnecessary snapshots before you package it up
   * Make sure you don't have any screen capture pictures or movies
      left in your virtual machine directory
   * Delete any vmware.log (or vmware-#.log) files from the virtual
      machine directory
   * Remove anything you don' t need from the guest OS filesystem
      In particular check out
         /var/log/
        ~/.cpan/build/*
        /var/cache
        /var/spool
       Mozilla cache directories if you've been running mozilla
    * Defrag the virtual disk after cleanup

--
Jason Kohles
email at jasonkohles.com - http://www.jasonkohles.com/
"A witty saying proves nothing."  -- Voltaire