packer-zcore

Packer build for the zCore Appliance — a Debian-based OVA that provides the shared infrastructure services for a zPod environment.

• OS: Debian 13.7 "Trixie"
• Format: OVF/OVA (built on a remote ESXi host via vmware-iso)
• First-boot config: driven by VMware OVF properties
• System disk: LVM (/boot partition, vg/swap 8 GB, vg/root on the rest); first boot grows root to the disk, zcore-init.sh --extend-disk does it again after a vSphere resize

Downloads

Latest builds are available here:

• https://cloud.tsugliani.fr/ova/zcore-13.7.ova

What changed in each version: GitHub releases (one per Debian point release, v13.7 is the zCore built on Debian 13.7) or CHANGELOG.md.

Services

The appliance bundles the core services a zPod relies on:

Service	Role
dnsmasq	DNS resolver + DHCP for the zPod management subnet
chrony	NTP server (serves time to all zPod subnets / VLANs)
NFS	nfs-kernel-server — exports /FILER/STORAGE01/* from a data disk
Traefik	TLS reverse proxy for the dashboard and zBoxAPI
zBoxAPI	API to manage zPod VLANs (/zboxapi)
FRR	Routing daemon (installed, disabled — enabled on demand)

IP forwarding is enabled, so the appliance also routes between the zPod VLANs.

Console (zBoxTUI)

zBoxTUI is baked into the image at build time but not wired to any console by default: every VT boots on the stock Debian getty. The guestinfo.zboxtui OVF property (boolean, default false) decides at first boot:

• True → /sbin/zcore-zboxtui-setup.sh --enable wires tty1 to the zBoxTUI dashboard (kmscon) and tty2 to a truecolor kmscon login shell, then switches the active VT to tty1.
• anything else → --disable purges kmscon and the zBoxTUI venv to reclaim the space the build baked in. tty1–tty6 stay on stock getty.

Toggle later on a running appliance with --enable / --disable. See the zBoxTUI INSTALL.md for operator and security notes.

Networking

• eth0 — management interface (static from OVF properties, or DHCP fallback)
• eth1 — zPod VLAN trunk (MTU 1700 for VXLAN/Geneve):
  • internal non-routed VLANs 10 / 20 / 30 → 172.16.10/20/30.1/24
  • routed /26 public subnets on VLANs 64 / 128 / 192

Building

Requirements: packer, VMware ovftool, and a reachable ESXi build host.

1. Copy zcore-builder.json.sample to zcore-builder.json and fill in your ESXi build host details. (The real zcore-builder.json is .gitignored so credentials are never committed.)

2. Run the build:

   ./build-zcore.sh

This runs packer build against zcore.json with the zcore-13.7.json version file, then exports the OVA. The OVA is named after APPLIANCE_VERSION in build-zcore.sh, not after the var file: 13.7 lands in output-zcore-13.7/zcore-13.7.ova (mode 644), and a respin 13.7.1 of the same Debian release in output-zcore-13.7.1/zcore-13.7.1.ova.

Releasing

python3 tools/release.py 13.8 --push

Create zcore-13.8.json and build the OVA first. The cut moves [Unreleased] in CHANGELOG.md under a [13.8] heading, points build-zcore.sh at the new var file, commits, tags v13.8 and pushes; the tag publishes the section as the GitHub release. python3 tools/release.py --check is what CI runs on every push. See tools/README.md.

Deploying

This should only be used through zPodFactory.