openSUSE is great for the desktop, great for the server, and now it’s ready to take on appliances — and we don’t mean toasters and blenders. No, we’re talking about software appliances — virtual machine images that come pre-configured with the application you want to use, without any of the hassle normally associated with installing an application.

If you’re interested in building a virtual appliance, or have another use for a minimal operating system, read on to learn about openSUSE LimeJeOS.

What is LimeJeOS?

LimeJeOS is the openSUSE version of JeOS. The term JeOS (”Just enough Operating System”) refers to a customized operating system that precisely fits the needs of a particular application. LimeJeOS includes only the pieces of an operating system required to support a particular application and any other third-party components contained in the appliance. This makes the appliance smaller, more efficient, more secure, and offers better performance than an application running under a full, general-purpose operating system.

As the name suggests, “LimeJeOS” itself is not an appliance or an operating system; it is just the base for various possible appliances. LimeJeOS contains just the very basic parts of an operating system. The major goal is to make the system as small as possible while providing the possibility to install additional software. A LimeJeOS system itself is not very useful without additional packages. Besides an editor (a stripped version of vi) it just contains a package manager that allows the actual applications to be installed. Of course all the usual repositories can be used for that purpose; just with a regular, full-size Linux distribution.

What is the difference between SLE JeOS and LimeJeOS?

SUSE Linux Enterprise JeOS relates to LimeJeOS just like openSUSE relates to SLES. In fact, SLE JeOS is built from the latest version of SLES while LimeJeOS is built from the latest version of openSUSE. While LimeJeOS provides the latest state of the openSUSE distribution, SLE JeOS will offer all the services and support that is also available for SLES.

Which one should you use? If you’re working on a virtual appliance for a project that won’t require commercial support, and you want to track the latest in open source, openSUSE is the version for you.

If you’re working on a project that’s likely to need support, then you probably want to go with SUSE Linux Enterprise JeOS.

Where can I get LimeJeOS?

LimeJeOS is built using kiwi. The configuration files are managed via Subversion and are available at: https://forgesvn1.novell.com/svn/opensuse/trunk/distribution/images/LimeJeOS/

In the future we plan to create a regular package (RPM) and add it to the openSUSE build service, so that the latest version is always created automatically with the latest software versions in openSuSE.

How to build LimeJeOS?

Check out the current version of LimeJeOS using the following commands:

svn co https://forgesvn1.novell.com/svn/opensuse/trunk/distribution/images/LimeJeOS

Make sure you have the needed kiwi packages installed. You will need at least: kiwi, kiwi-tools and kiwi-desc-vmxboot and/or kiwi-desc-xenboot from http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/Tools/. When those conditions are met, building the openJeOS images is accomplished by just running the “./build.sh” script from the LimeJeOS repository.

./build.sh

Please note that the build process will need at least twice as much diskspace as the final images, so you’ll need around 2 GB of free disk space at this time to build Lime JeOS.

After you have booted the virtual system, log in as user “root” with password “linux”.

I’m playing with Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) for about 2 years, and quite satisfied with the stability, feature and administrative console. Before applying Zimbra I used standard postfix for office mail server.

Zimbra released with 2 licensing schema, commercial and open source license. Their open source license provided with Yahoo Public License.

I’m currently using Zimbra 5.0.4 on openSUSE 10.3. Manual installation could be found in my personal blog : Zimbra Installation on openSUSE 10.3. You may need a small modification into ZCS installation script because ZCS originally released for openSUSE 10.2.

After deploying Zimbra on openSUSE 10.3 for such company (part of Indonesian openSUSE community project for increasing openSUSE usability and our promotion project of openSUSE usability for server side), I make a deal to write a small script using bash. It’s pretty simple and looks like a primitive script with just cp, tar and mv . I will make a nice graphical user interface after learning C++ or Java .

So, how to build powerful mail server with Zimbra on openSUSE 10.3 ? Here it does :

1. Install openSUSE 10.3
2. Make sure you have a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) for your hostname, ie : namahost.namadomain.com, not only namahost. Checked it out with YAST | Network Service | DNS & Host Name or by editing /etc/hosts directly
3. Make sure you have more than 5 GB of free space. Please navigate into “Preparing your server environment” on Zimbra Wiki for more information.
4. Setup your DNS server. For testing, you may only create name server and address record (NS MX & A records). Please refer to a nice article How to Setup BIND DNS Server. *We have a nice graphical setup DNS using YAST but it was written on Bahasa Indonesia*
5. Download Zimbra-Auto install script
6. Extract the script into /opt/zimbra-auto. I will make a flexible script in the future but currently the script will only worked with /opt/zimbra-auto until you editing the script
7. Download ZCS open source edition for openSUSE. The script was originally written for ZCS ver 5.0.4. If you used the latest ZCS version, please feel free to make an editing into Zimbra-Auto script
8. Getting started by running /opt/zimbra-auto/zimbra-auto-opensuse103.sh install script and follow the wizard.

Note :

1. You may need add an exception port into firewall and AppArmor configuration
2. I will make an entry on openSUSE wiki after reviewing the script

Related Entry :

1. Installing ZCS 5.0.X on openSUSE 10.3 a complete guide by Bigmudcake
2. Zimbra Installation on openSUSE 10.3
3. Installing ZCS 4.5.x on either openSUSE 10.2 or 10.3 a complete guide
4. Problem may occurred regarding AppArmor Setting