Trim diskless rootimg

To reduce the memory and boot-up time for the diskless node, the initrd and rootimg.gz should be kept as compact as possible under the premise of meeting the user’s requirements.

Exclude list

xCAT provides an attribute exlist in the osimage object definition, that allows the user to select files to exclude when building the rootimg.gz file for the diskless node.

Take the osimage sles12.1-ppc64le-netboot-compute for example:

# lsdef -t osimage -o sles12.1-ppc64le-netboot-compute -i exlist
Object name: sles12.1-ppc64le-netboot-compute
    exlist=/opt/xcat/share/xcat/netboot/sles/compute.sles12.ppc64le.exlist

Content of the Exclude List file

The file specified in linuximage.exlist includes relative path of the directories and files that will be excluded from the rootimg.gz generated by packimage. The relative path assumes the rootimg directory, /install/netboot/sles12.1/ppc64le/compute/rootimg here, to be the base directory. [1]

The following is a sample of exlist file

...
./usr/share/X11/locale/*
./usr/lib/perl[0-9]/[0-9.]*/ppc64le-linux-thread-multi/Encode/JP*
+./usr/share/X11/locale/C*
...

The content above presents some syntax supported in exlist file:

  • Exclude files:

    ./usr/share/X11/locale/*

    All the files and subdirectories under rootimg/usr/share/X11/locale/ will be excluded.

  • Exclude Files using Patterns [2]:

    ./usr/lib/perl[0-9]/[0-9.]*/ppc64le-linux-thread-multi/Encode/JP*

    Use regular expression to easily exclude files. The above example will exclude any Perl library installed under /usr/lib/ matching ppc64le-linux-thread-multi/Encode/JP*

  • Include files:

    +./usr/share/locale/C*

    It is useful to include files following an exclude entry to quickly remove a larger set of files using a wildcard and then adding back the few necessary files using the + sign. In the above example, all the files and sub-directories matching the pattern /usr/share/locale/C* will be included in the rootimg.gz file.

Customize the exlist file and the osimage definition

Check the default exlist file and make sure:

  • all files and directories you do not want in the image will be excluded from the rootimg.

  • no file or directory you need will be excluded from the rootimg.

If you want to customize the osimage sles12.1-ppc64le-netboot-compute with your own exlist file, follow the following steps:

#create a customized exlist file based on the default one
cp /opt/xcat/share/xcat/netboot/sles/compute.sles12.ppc64le.exlist /install/custom/netboot/sles/compute.sles12.ppc64le.exlist

#edit the newly created exlist file according to your need
vi /install/custom/netboot/sles/compute.sles12.ppc64le.exlist

#specify the newly created exlist file in the osimage definition
chdef -t osimage -o sles12.1-ppc64le-netboot-compute exlist=/install/custom/netboot/sles/compute.sles12.ppc64le.exlist