Installation Images

Installation images are used to speed installation up. Each separate image contains a compact part of a filesystem. Several images can be combined together to finally create several different complete systems - the only unique image for each such system is a separate image containing RPM (plus other metadata) database for a particular system.

Example of images on media:

Available Images:
  * Base_System
  * Xorg
  * Additional_Tools
  * Metadata_image_*, one for each imageset

Example of imagesets (combinations of images):

Base System:
  + Base_System
  + Metadata_image_1 (Base_System.meta)

Advanced System:
  + Base_System
  + Xorg
  + Metadata_image_2 (Base_System.meta + Xorg.meta)

Superadvanced System
  + Base_System
  + Xorg
  + Additional_Tools
  + Metadata_image_3 (Base_System.meta + Xorg.meta + Additional_Tools.meta)

Supported Types of Images

• *.lzma (((files)tar)lzma) - TAR* archive additionally compressed with LZMA

• *.xz - (((files)tar)lzma) - TAR* archive additionally compressed with newer LZMA

• *.tar.bzip2, *.tar.gz (((files)tar)bzip2/gzip) - TAR*/Bzip2; resp. TAR*/Gzip archive

* Each TAR archive is created with: --numeric-owner --checkpoint=400 --record-size=10240

Imagesets Description

If we want to use installation images, we have to describe them first. See the example of file stored on the first installation media:

This XML file describes sets of images from which an installation chooses the best-matching one according to <patterns>...</patterns> item defined in each imageset.

Images Details

Each imageset contains one or more images. To provide a useful feedback when deploying the images, they have to be described in /images/details-$ARCH.xml, respectively in file /images/details.xml stored on the first installation media:

$ARCH is any architecture recognized by Yast see Arch library in yast2. Mandatary items for each image (file name) are file and size (in bytes).