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Reference 110
Template Management Utilities
A
template
is basically a set of packages from some Linux distribution used to populate a VPS.
An OS template consists of system programs, libraries, and scripts needed to boot up and run
the system (VPS), as well as some very basic applications and utilities. Applications like a
compiler and an SQL server are usually not included into an OS template.
A
template cache
is an OS template installed into a VPS and then packed into a gzipped tar
archive. This allows to greatly sped up the creation of a new Virtual Private Server: instead of
installing all the packages comprising a Linux distribution,
vzctl
just unpacks the archive.
Template metadata
are a set of files containing the information needed to recreate the template
cache. It contains the following information:
List of packages this template comprises
Locations of (network) package repositories
Scripts needed to be executed on various stages of template installation
Public GPG key(s) needed to check signatures of packages
Additional OpenVZ-specific packages
vzpkgls
This utility lists templates installed on the Hardware Node or already installed into a particular
VPS. It has the following syntax:
vzpkgls [-c|--cached]
vzpkgls
vpsid
If you specify a Virtual Private Server ID to this command, it lists templates applied to the
Virtual Private Server. Without the
vpsid
argument, the utility lists templates available for
Virtual Private Servers on the Hardware Node. Other options available to the
vzpkgls
command are listed below:
-c, --cached
This option has no effect if the
vpsid
argument is given. If used for listing
templates available on the Hardware Node this option makes
vzpkgls
to
omit OS templates for which cache was not created by running
vzpkgcache
. In other words, with this option on,
vzpkgls
will list only
the templates ready to be used for Virtual Private Servers.