Using systemimager to create VMs quickly and easily

Add the public key for the SystemImager download repository to your system:

# wget http://systemimager.org/pub/brian@thefinleys.com.gpg.key -O - | apt-key add -

Add the repository itself to your system:

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/systemimager.list

deb http://download.systemimager.org/debian stablemain

And then install SystemImager:

aptitude update && aptitude install systemimager-client

The machine will install a much more reasonable number of packages than it did on the master:

The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libappconfig-perl{a} makedev{a} systemconfigurator{a} systemimager-client systemimager-common{a}
  systemimager-initrd-template-amd64{a} 
0 packages upgraded, 6 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

At this point, the caveat shown in https://www.howtoforge.com/howto_linux_systemimager regarding "prefix al commands with si_" becomes important, so find out the IP address of your master and type:

si_prepareclient --server IP.address.of.master

After confirming that you're happy to let SystemImager kill any existing rsyncd processes and start a new one of its own, you then get the error message:

WARNING: cannot find the version of LVM or LVM version is not supported!
ERROR: unsupported kernel 3.2.0-4-amd64!

There appears to be no documentation to help with whatever the hell this means. LVM is not being used on this machine, and I see no reason why it should need to be for SystemImager to work. Admittedly that's only a warning, but what's wrong with a stock Debian Wheezy kernel? Why does SystemImager have to care which kernel I'm using anyway?

Okay, after a bit of fiddling around inside the Perl scripts which comprise SystemImager, I found that it thinks Linux can run on a 2.4 kernel or a 2.6 kernel - anything else is "unsupported". I guess that means:

• it can't work with 2.2 or below
• it wasn't expected to be used with 2.3 or 2.5
• the author never considered that Linux might reach 3.0 or higher

So, anyway, I changed a couple of checks for the kernel version, and managed to get si_prepareclient to start. I then went back to the master and ran si_getimage, and eventually ended up with an ISO image which won't boot.

I give up. This is not a useful tool. Nice idea, but it just doesn't work.

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