You may build a new virtual appliance from scratch booting from a CD or ISO file and using Red Hat Kickstart.

Kickstart is a tool for automating installations on Linux. You will need a repository of rpm files and a configuration file containing the answers to all the questions that would normally be asked during the installation.

In this example we will be using the default Searchdaimon Kickstart file and the default repository.

This installation method requires that you are on a network where the virtual machine can download thru http and that dhcp is enabled.

General installation

You can install Searchdaimon ES on must physical and virtual machines as long as it support 64 bit computing and has a hard disk with 25 gb or more, attached as sdb1.

Install Searchdaimon ES

* Download the http://www.searchdaimon.com/es/Fedora-8-x86_64-rescuecd.iso file
* Boot from the newly downloaded Fedora-8-x86_64-rescuecd.iso file
* At boot use you’re up arrow key to select “Install or upgrade an existing system” and then press Tab (edit)
* Add ” ks=http://www.searchdaimon.com/es/ks.cfg sddata=sdb” and press enter

This will download and install both the ES software and the underlying operating system. When the installation is finished the virtual machine will reboot and boot from the iso again. Just disconnect the cd-rom and reboot the machine a second time to bring up the ES.

VirtualBox

Create a new virtual machine

Find the “New” button and create a new virtual machine named SearchdaimonES with the following features:

* Type: Linux
* Version: Fedora (64 bit)
* Memory: 1024 (or more)
* Hard drive: Skip making a hard drive

Settings

Right click on the newly created machine and select settings. In settings:

* Create disk nr 1: On the SATA controller make a 13GB dynamically allocated disk, renamed it to Disk1
* Create disk nr 2: On the SATA controller make a 60GB or more dynamically allocated disk that will be used to store crawled data on, renamed it to Disk2
* Set the network adapter to be “Briged”
* Under system disable ““Enable absolute pointing device” if the choice is available
* Set Pointing Device to “PS/2 Mouse” if the choice is available
* Disable USB support

Install Searchdaimon ES

* Download the http://www.searchdaimon.com/es/Fedora-8-x86_64-rescuecd.iso file
* Boot from the newly downloaded Fedora-8-x86_64-rescuecd.iso file
* At boot use you’re up arrow key to select “Install or upgrade an existing system” and then press Tab (edit)
* Add ” ks=http://www.searchdaimon.com/es/ks.cfg sddata=sdb” and press enter

This will download and install both the ES software and the underlying operating system. When the installation is finished the virtual machine will reboot and boot from the iso again. Just disconnect the cd-rom and reboot the machine a second time to bring up the ES.

Unfortunately the machine may fail with a kernel panic on the first boot. This is caused by a bug in VirtualBox, but only happened on the very first boot. If this happens to you, exit the virtual machines window and select “power off the machine” in the dialog box that appears.. Then start it again ( you need to do a full exit and start it again. Just restarting will not be enough). 

Installing VirtualBox client tools

Log on to the console as root and run:

* yum install boitho-virtualbox
* yum clean all
* reboot
* log on again and run halt, then power off the machine

That’s it. You can now export your new virtual appliance.

Known bugs

If you have made a ES befor you may get an error like this when trying to creat disk 1 or disk 2:

Failed to create the hard disk storage <FilePath>.
Cannot register the hard disk <FilePath><GUID> because a hard disk <FilePath> with UUID <GUID> already exists.

Apparently VirtualBox uses identifiers based on the hard disk name. Each hard disk has to have a unique name, and the name can not be reused even after you have deleted the hard drive. So to work around this just give the hard drive a different, unique name.

VMware ESX server

Create a new virtual machine

Access File->New->Virtual machine and create a new virtual machine named SearchdaimonES with the following features:

* Virtual Machine Configuration: Typical
* Guest Operating System: Linux
* Version: Other Linux (64 bit)
* Memory: 1024 (or more)
* Network: 1 network interface with the cable connected at boot ( the defult chose)
* Disk 1: 13Gb

Settings

Right click on the newly created machine and choose edit settings. In the setting window:
* Create disk nr 2: Choose add and add a new 10 gb or more second hard disk.

Install Searchdaimon ES

* Download the http://www.searchdaimon.com/es/Fedora-8-x86_64-rescuecd.iso file
* Boot from the newly downloaded Fedora-8-x86_64-rescuecd.iso file
* At boot use you’re up arrow key to select “Install or upgrade an existing system” and then press Tab (edit)
* Add ” ks=http://www.searchdaimon.com/es/ks.cfg sddata=sdb” and press enter

This will download and install both the ES software and the underlying operating system. When you see that the installation begins to download rpm packages disconnect the cd-rom to prevent the system to boot into the instalation gain when the instal is finished.

Installing VMware client tools

Log on to the console as root and run:

* yum install boitho-vmware
* yum clean all
* reboot
* log on again and run halt, then power off the machine

That’s it. You can now export your new virtual appliance by going to File->Virtual Appliance->Export..