v14.0 Optimized Builds - Part 1: OVA & VMDK

I am happy to announce the release of our OVA and VMDK VM builds. 14.0 optimized VM builds can be downloaded from their respective appliance pages (eg. LAMP, WordPress Node.js etc). Alternatively you can download the entire library via one of our mirrors.

TurnKey Core 12.0 RC optimized builds

Last month we announced the release candidate for TurnKey Core 12.0 - the common base for all appliances, based on the rock solid Debian Squeeze (6.0.4).

Converting a virtual disk image: VDI or VMDK to an ISO you can distribute

Why would anyone in their right mind want to convert a VM into an ISO?

Good question, the answer for Conor Fox (who was the inspiration for this post - thanks Conor!) was to distribute his customized TurnKey PostgreSQL image so others could use it.

Distributing an ISO as opposed to a VM image allows it to be installed on any virtualization platform, as well as on bare metal, with the added bonus of running live.

I suppose that's a good enough reason, so lets get to it.

Converting a virtual disk image: VDI to VMDK to a raw loopback file you can mount

By default, VirtualBox creates virtual disk images in a special format called VDI, which is unique to VirtualBox. Disk images are stored in $HOME/.VirtualBox/HardDisks.

You'll need to convert VDI into another format if you want to run a VirtualBox VM on another virtualization platform, such as VMWare or KVM.