Labs Gallery: rPath rBuilder 5 Gets Flash-y, Adds Linux Distro Support

by Jason Brooks

The first step to creating a software appliance with rBuilder involves choosing your desired Linux distribution platform and selecting which deployment options to support.

Using rBuilder’s new Flash-based interface, I could grab software components from the repositories of my chosen Linux distribution, as well as create new packages.

I could upload RPM or DEB packages, as well as regular TAR archives, to add to my software appliances.

rBuilder sorts through the software dependencies required to run your uploaded packages.

Sorting through the queue of appliance build operations highlights the richness of rBuilder’s new Flash-based interface.

The Flash interface replaces the previous, HTML-based controls.

While the new Flash interface provides a more desktop app-like experience, I encountered a handful of interface stalls and lockups during my tests.

While on the topic of interface qualms, I ran into a few unhelpful error messages during my testing. Fortunately, the rBuilder appliance’s admin console offered up plenty of logs to peruse.

From rBuilder’s new management console, I could launch my images on virtualization targets such as Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service.

I could set my desired EC2 launch options from a pop-up dialog in the rBuilder interface.

I also launched appliances on a VMware vSphere setup in the lab.