Virtual Appliances Proof-Of-Concept

[Andreas Heck]

Hi all,

I've always liked the idea of putting complex software and some useful
configuration into an appliance to make it available and usable for
everyone. Since Ubuntu started to build its own appliances in the karmic
cycle I also spent some thoughts on what might be the best ways to build
appliances.

The best idea I could come up with so far is to build them as Debian
packages. The details are documented on the following wiki page which
also has instructions on how to install a working proof-of-concept
moinmoin appliance:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VirtualAppliancesAsPackages

Actually this is two Proof-Of-Concepts in one. For once it shows how to
use plain Debian packages and some small wrapper script to build
reproducible and easily maintainable appliances and then it also
demonstrates an early version of a web interface that supports basic
administration features (system information, security updates etc.) and
allows a plugin to be hooked in that provides feature specific to the
application provided by the appliance like backup and restore for
example.

I'd like to propose this for discussion at the UDS (where I try to
attend remotely) and hope to get some interesting feedback in advance on
this list.


Best regards,

Andreas