*Almost any OS
We’ve added a great new feature in Jidoteki, it’s the ability to install *any operating system from your own .iso URL. We say *any but in fact it doesn’t work with Windows yet.
So far we’ve successfully tested with OpenBSD, NixOS and VyOS.
Import Veewee and Packer templates configs
We know most of you are using Veewee or Packer to create custom virtual machines. With Jidoteki, you can now paste your .iso file URL and boot command directly into a form field for us to download and install.
You can’t paste your entire templates, so make sure to follow the examples provided.
How does it work?
Similarly to a regular OS installation, we’ll feed the custom script (preseed/kickstart/etc) to the virtual machine over a private HTTP server.
Jidoteki will then take your boot command and send the string to the console.
Boot command options
Just like Veewee and Packer, Jidoteki accepts special variables for the HTTP server’s IP, PORT and NAME. It also accepts all the standard special codes such as <esc>, <wait>, <enter> (case insensitive).
You can paste the config directly into the text field, which we’ll then sanitize and turn into a much friendlier multi-line string. We do this because we use YAML multi-line strings as opposed to Ruby and JSON arrays.
Feel free to use a multi-line string if you prefer.
Documentation
We’ve updated our documentation in the Create section to provide more details about the custom OS installation process.
We hope you can try this out and let us know how it works for you.
As usual, we can be reached on Twitter, by email, or in our public chat on Freenode IRC.