COMFY - ClOud iMage FactorY

COMFY is a tool for building virtual machine images from scratch.

Build Status Dependency Status Gem Version Code Climate

Requirements

  • Ruby >= 1.9.3
  • Rubygems
  • [Packer] >= 0.8.6 (https://www.packer.io/) (used for the image creation process)
  • VirtualBox (if you want to create ova images)
  • QEMU/KVM (if you want to create qcow2 images)

Installation

Unfortunately, neither gem nor packages are available for COMFY right now. To try COMFY, please use the From source guide below.

From source (dev)

Installation from source should never be your first choice! Especially, if you are not familiar with RVM, Bundler, Rake and other dev tools for Ruby!

However, if you wish to contribute to our project, this is the right way to start.

To build and install the bleeding edge version from master

git clone git://github.com/CESNET/comfy.git
cd comfy
gem install bundler
bundle install
bundle exec rake spec

Configuration

Create a configuration file for COMFY

Configuration file can be read by COMFY from these three locations:

  • ~/.comfy/comfy.yml
  • /etc/comfy/comfy.yml
  • PATH_TO_GEM_DIR/config/comfy.yml

The example configuration file can be found at the last location PATH_TO_GEM_DIR/config/comfy.yml. When editing a configuration file you have to follow the division into three environments: production, development and test. All the configuration options are described in the example configuration file.

Usage

COMFY is run with executable comfy. For further assistance run comfy help:

$ comfy help

Commands:
  comfy DISTRIBUTION                            # Builds VM with selected distribution
  comfy <DISTRIBUTION>-versions                 # Lists available versions for selected destribution
  comfy clean-cache -c, --cache-dir=CACHE-DIR   # Cleans packer's cache containing distributions' installation media
  comfy distributions                           # Lists all available distributions and their versions
  comfy export -d, --destination=DESTINATION    # Exports files for building virtual machines. Helps with the customization of the build process.
  comfy help [COMMAND]                          # Describe available commands or one specific command
  comfy version                                 # Prints COMFY's version

Options:
  --logging-level=LOGGING-LEVEL
                                 # Possible values: DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL, UNKNOWN
  [--logging-file=LOGGING-FILE]  # File to write log to
  [--debug], [--no-debug]        # Runs COMFY in debug mode

Building process of selected VM can be customized. To list all the options for one of the distributions run comfy help DISTRIBUTION:

$ comfy help ubuntu

Usage:
  comfy ubuntu -c, --cache-dir=CACHE-DIR -f, --formats=one two three -o, --output-dir=OUTPUT-DIR -s, --size=N -v, --version=VERSION

Options:
  -v, --version=VERSION                    # Version of distribution to build
  -f, --formats=one two three              # Output format of the virtual machine image (qemu - qcow2, virtualbox - ova)
                                           # Possible values: qemu, virtualbox
  -s, --size=N                             # Disk size for created virtual machines (in MB)
  -o, --output-dir=OUTPUT-DIR              # Directory to which COMFY will produce virtual machine files
  -c, --cache-dir=CACHE-DIR                # Directory for packer's cache e.g. distribution installation images
  -g, [--groups=one two three]             # Groups VM belongs to. For automatic processing purposes
  -i, [--identifier=IDENTIFIER]            # VM identifier. For automatic processing purposes
  -d, [--description], [--no-description]  # Generates VM description file. For automatic processing purposes
  -t, [--template-dir=TEMPLATE-DIR]        # Directory COMFY uses templates from to build a VM
      --logging-level=LOGGING-LEVEL
                                           # Possible values: DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL, UNKNOWN
      [--logging-file=LOGGING-FILE]        # File to write log to
      [--debug], [--no-debug]              # Runs COMFY in debug mode

Builds VM with distribution Ubuntu

COMFY currently supports building of these distributions:

  • CentOS 7.2.1511
  • Debian 7.9.0
  • Debian 8.2.0
  • ScientificLinux 7.1
  • Ubuntu 14.04

Example

To start a building process for example for debian simply run:

$ comfy debian

When not specified, COMFY will build the newest version of selected distribution. If you want to select a specific version run:

$ comfy debian -v 7.9.0

COMFY uses by default a QEMU supervisor for image creation. If you want to use VirtualBox you can do it with:

$ comfy debian -f virtualbox

Or if you want to use both:

$ comfy debian -f qemu virtualbox

This will create virtual machine images in both qcow2 and ovf formats. Since QEMU and VirtualBox can't run simultaneously, images are created in two sequential runs.

Continuous integration

Continuous integration for COMFY by Travis-CI

Contributing

  1. Fork it ( https://github.com/CESNET/comfy/fork )
  2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
  5. Create a new Pull Request