ken’s blog » appliance-creator

Ars Technica review of rBuilder

kenvandine — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:19:43 +0000

Ars Technica just posted a review of rBuilder, check it out.

Appliance creation made easy

kenvandine — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 03:45:52 +0000

After my post the other about the recent addition of the ubuntu platform in rBuilder Online, I had a bunch of inquires asking “What is this appliance creator thing?” Let me start out by explaining that Appliance Creator isn’t actually a product or service of it’s own, it is a feature of rBuilder. The goal here is to make it as simple as possible to take your application and create an appliance with JeOS to get it running. You can import your application from an rpm, deb, or a tar/zip archive (not source), and with a few clicks of the mouse have an appliance that can be downloaded or booted in the cloud.

I have put together a screenshot tour, taking you through the process. Please note the captions along the bottom, they should help explain what each step is all about. Another handy hint, you can use the “N” and “P” for next and previous to navigate (using lightbox).

Ubuntu, meet rBuilder

kenvandine — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:38:02 +0000

I’ll bet that sounds confusing! Well it’s true, the base Ubuntu server platform is now available for building application images on rBuilder Online. What does this really mean? The addition of the Ubuntu platform will allow the rBuilder community to build application images based on either rPath Linux or Ubuntu server. The rPath Appliance Platform Agent is also included in the Ubuntu platform.

With this addition, the Appliance Creator has been updated to import debian packages, just like you could already import rpm, tar, and zip binary archives.

To use the Ubuntu platform, you have to either edit an existing product version or create a new one. There is a drop down for selecting platform:

rBuilder Online is beta, and rPath’s imported Ubuntu platform is currently alpha. Please use them both and help us improve by filing bug reports.