KIWI Image System provides a complete operating system image solution for Linux supported hardware platforms as well as for virtualisation systems like Xen Qemu or VMware. The KIWI architecture was designed as a two level system. The first stage, based on a valid software package source, creates a so called physical extend according to the provided image description. The second stage creates from a required physical extend an operating system image. The result of the second stage is called a logical extend or short an image.
A normal installation process is starting from a given installation source and installs single pieces of software until the system is complete. During this process there may be manual user intervention required. However an operating system image represents an already completed installation encapsulated as a file and optionally includes the configuration for a specific task. Such an operating system starts working as soon as the image has been brought to a system storage device no matter if this is a volatile or non volatile storage. The process of creating an image takes place without user interaction.
This means all requirements of the encapsulated system has to be fulfilled before the image is created. According to this the so called image description tree stores all the information needed to create an image.
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Here are some key features of "KIWI Image System":
· Distribution independent
· Support for virtualisation systems like Xen
· Support for deploying images over the network
· Support for VMware / Qemu images
· Support for USB-Stick systems
· Support for LiveCD/DVD systems
· Centralized image description based on XML
· Prebuild boot images for SUSE systems
· Prebuild PXE configuration usable with kiwi netboot images
· SUSE Linux on a 128MB flash card.. yes that's possible
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