Installation on CentOS

Install CentOS 5

My CentOS 5 installation is a DVD install with only the "Desktop - GNOME" group selected.

On restart, a number of questions (timezone/security level/etc) are asked. At this stage set the "SELinux" option to disabled. If you skip this step, then simply modify the /etc/sysconfig/selinux file and disable selinux from there. You will need to reboot before this takes effect, but its okay to wait until you have installed the kernel before doing this (just to save some time :)

Install the vserver kernel

I have found using Daniel's fedora kernel rpm's work great with CentOS 5, so I downloaded the relevent kernel RPMS files

wget -c http://rpm.hozac.com/dhozac/fedora/6/vserver/i386/kernel-2.6.20-1.2936.fc6.vs2.2.0.1.i686.rpm

Then install the kernel...

rpm -ivh kernel-2.6.20-1.2936.fc6.vs2.2.0.1.i686.rpm

Double check the grub file to make sure its the bootable kernel (/boot/grub/grub.conf). If all is okay we are ready to restart the server.

At this stage (before the reboot) I also modify the hosts sshd config file, so it doesn't listen to every interface on the server. This blocks any guests attempt to run sshd.

vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

and add the line "ListenAddress 192.168.0.1"

Install util-vserver (from source via RPM)

At this stage I had to add some packages to my installation

sudo yum install rpm-build gcc-c++ e2fsprogs-devel beecrypt-devel doxygen tetex-latex
wget ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/fedora/extras/5/i386/dietlibc-0.30-1.fc5.i386.rpm
wget ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/fedora/extras/5/i386/dietlibc-lib-0.30-1.fc5.i386.rpm
sudo yum localinstall dietlibc-0.30-1.fc5.i386.rpm dietlibc-lib-0.30-1.fc5.i386.rpm

Now we are ready to make the util-vserver rpm's

wget -c http://ftp.linux-vserver.org/pub/utils/util-vserver/util-vserver-0.30.213.tar.bz2
rpmbuild -tb util-vserver-0.30.213.tar.bz2

And finally, install the new rpms

sudo yum localinstall /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/util-vserver*

Post installation steps

Make certain /proc entries visable (required every boot, so install the vprocunhide start script on boot)

sudo /sbin/chkconfig --add vprocunhide
sudo /etc/init.d/vprocunhide start

Install a guest

As root, try the following to test your installation (this example installs a fedora core 6 guest)

sudo vserver testing01 build -m yum --context 4040 --hostname=test01.test.loc \
--interface eth0=eth0:192.168.101.101/255.255.0.0 -- -d centos5

yum will install the minimal packages now. After the yum process completes i got this error:

    /usr/lib/util-vserver/distributions/fc6/initpost: line 105:  3587 Killed
    $_VSERVER "$vserver" exec bash -c ': >/tmp/startwait' >&/dev/null

Some part of the script is broken it seems, but it won't affect the install. At this point you must be able to start and enter your vserver install. To start it the vserver do,

 sudo vserver testing01 start

And to enter the vserver, do

 sudo vserver testing01 enter

Now you must be inside the centos5 install, you can start installing the packages you need now. In case yum is not installed, you can do it via the following in the host system

 sudo vyum testing01 -- install yum

If all goes well you now have a working setup :)