CentOS-7-x86_64-GenericCloud.raw Very Unusual Format

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Hello!

Is anyone aware why CentOS-7-x86_64-GenericCloud.raw has such unusual format ?

root@test-srv:~# wget http://cloud.CentOS.org/CentOS/7/images/CentOS-7-x86_64-GenericCloud.raw
–2016-03-21 13:16:31

16 thoughts on - CentOS-7-x86_64-GenericCloud.raw Very Unusual Format

  • Johnny is looking at the cdn side of thigs, but effectively we will not have a .raw – we will have a .raw.tar.gz file ( which will itself only have a .raw file compressed inside it )

  • –jHdV1JAXRMkdbmx4i483voHtIMbE5W5TX
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

    It looks as if using ‘Multiple Views’ in the apache setup means that you can effectively download a file even leaving off the extension .. in your case, it left off the tar.gz but allowed you to download that file anyway.

    We are looking at changing the apache configuration to prevent this type of thing in the future.

    As an example:

    http://mirror.CentOS.org/CentOS/7/isos/x86_64/CentOS-7-x86_64-Everything-1511

    that pulls down the .torrent file even though there is no .torrent

    The bottom line is, please download the .raw.tar.gz file and not the
    .raw file and we are working on the configs.

    –jHdV1JAXRMkdbmx4i483voHtIMbE5W5TX

  • Why not a compressed qcow2?

    Like: CentOS-7-x86_64-GenericCloud.qcow2c

    This way, we can add it as-is to OpenStack Glance, that it will be downloaded by demand, when required and, OpenStack Nova will automatically uncompress the image for runtime.

    Cheers!
    Thiago

  • –OBi482dtsjrEaAJqjlDBBqXrW1ojTtScQ
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

    So I found yesterday that the MultiViews option was active in the template used by cfgmgmt for those vhosts, and was the root cause of that behaviour. I confirm that such .raw image wasn’t even present on those cloud.CentOS.org, but httpd served the .raw.tar.gz instead. Fix for this was pushed earlier today so you’ll now have a 404 if you try to download that .raw file again. That brings though another question : why trying specifically to download a .raw file that isn’t listed on that page ?

  • What you mean is not listed ?
    Click 1) https://www.CentOS.org/download/
    there click 2) More download choices it goes to 3) https://wiki.CentOS.org/Download there you see 4) Cloud / Containers , http://cloud.CentOS.org/CentOS/7/images/CentOS-7-x86_64-GenericCloud.raw

    raw files are very useful, they are very convenient to tweak by simply mounting using losetup. And there is no good reason to put 1 file inside tar.gz, just compressed raw.gz would be fine.

  • –PV2C06jLMa5PcoVjJ6Q5HkIXe2KTmHbX7
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

    The reason is that some big cloud guys need it as a tgz because that is what they use.

    It is just as easy for anyone else (not specifically needing tgz) to extract the image to obtain a raw file from tgz format as from gz format. (one command, you end up with the raw file).

    This way, we only need one compressed raw image file, not 2 or 3 raw images compressed in different ways.

    Thanks, Johnny Hughes

    –PV2C06jLMa5PcoVjJ6Q5HkIXe2KTmHbX7

  • We do publish a qcow2c, the always updated version ( updated each month end ) is at :
    http://cloud.CentOS.org/CentOS/7/images/CentOS-7-x86_64-GenericCloud.qcow2c

    This is a symlink that points to the latest image. At the moment this is
    :
    http://cloud.CentOS.org/CentOS/7/images/CentOS-7-x86_64-GenericCloud-1602.qcow2c

    There will be a 1603 by the end of this week


    Karanbir Singh
    +44-207-0999389 | http://www.karan.org/ | twitter.com/kbsingh GnuPG Key : http://www.karan.org/publickey.asc

  • Sounds awesome! Thanks for sharing the symlink… I’ll use it instead.. Cheers!

  • Problem re-appeared again.

    At that time I’m unable to download Cloud Image linked from

    https://wiki.CentOS.org/Download

    http://cloud.CentOS.org/CentOS/7/images/CentOS-7-x86_64-GenericCloud.raw.xz

    $ wget http://cloud.CentOS.org/CentOS/7/images/CentOS-7-x86_64-GenericCloud.raw.xz
    –2016-10-10 11:21:32–
    http://cloud.CentOS.org/CentOS/7/images/CentOS-7-x86_64-GenericCloud.raw.xz Resolving cloud.CentOS.org (cloud.CentOS.org)… 162.252.80.138,
    2607:1680:0:1::2
    Connecting to cloud.CentOS.org
    (cloud.CentOS.org)|162.252.80.138|:80… connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 404 Not Found
    2016-10-10 11:21:32 ERROR 404: Not Found.

    As before I’m looking for a raw image, or a tar of the corresponding file system,

    Thanks!

  • Hello,

    Just a question, what exactly are these images?

    I see it mentioned on the CentOS website but not a lot of info on exactly what it is and what it does.

    How does this differ from a CentOS 7 VM installed from an ISO? Are these just pre-made images?

    thanks

  • Kind of, there is a CentOS-7-x86_64-GenericCloud.raw.tar.gz ( compare with CentOS-7-x86_64-GenericCloud.raw.xz )

    But again link is not good, and why put raw disk inside the tar?
    It would me more natural to have compressed image so one can do
    {z,bz,xc}cat cloud.raw.xz > /dev/lvm/vm-disk for example.

    Official wiki link is broken regardless.

  • these are images prebuilt to work in cloud infrastructure like openshift
    / amazon ec2 etc. they are pre-setup with cloud-init tools and are formatted in different backing filetypes.

    you can use them for local VM’s as well, but you will just need to do a bit more work since there is no way to login to the images without exporting the metadata externally to setup passwords and keys etc.

  • This is how OracleCloud works, they are unable to consume a raw file directly. I agree, its a bit odd.

    for the sake of size, lots of people prefer to download the qcow2c image
    ( note the compressed flag ), and qemu-img convert on their own end. Is that an option for your usecase ?

    will try and get that fixed.

  • Earlier versions of xz (RHEL 5, I think?) didn’t handle sparse files, and we put the Fedora raw cloud image inside a tar for that reason. I
    don’t know if the same applies here, but it might.

  • in bit the

    Sorry I haven’t replied sooner. Still trying to digest this.

    I appreciate your response. I have no idea what you said or what use they would be if you couldn’t login except via SSH. How would you add content? I
    did see something about having to change the root password or something.

    Might spin one up to see, I’m still lost.

    Is there a demo site?

    TIA