Virtual Disk Images Management¶

This is only available from the command line binary at this time.

Listing disk images¶

$> phenix image list

Creating a disk image¶

The vmdb2 utility is required -- in path -- to create the disk images.

$> phenix image create <image name>

The phenix image create --help will output:

Create a disk image configuration

  Used to create a virtual disk image configuration from which to build
  an image

Usage:
  phenix image create <image name> [flags]

Examples:

  phenix image create <image name>
  phenix image create --size 2G --variant mingui --release xenial --format qcow2 --compress --overlays foobar --packages foo --scripts bar <image name>

Flags:
  -c, --compress                    Compress image after creation (does not apply to raw image)
  -d, --debootstrap-append string   Additional arguments to debootstrap "(default: --components=main,restricted,universe,multiverse)"
  -f, --format string               Format of disk image (default "raw")
  -h, --help                        help for create
  -m, --mirror string               Debootstrap mirror (must match release) (default "http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/")
  -O, --overlays string             List of overlay names (include full path; separated by comma)
  -P, --packages string             List of packages to include in addition to those provided by variant (separated by comma)
  -R, --ramdisk                     Create a kernel/initrd pair in addition to a disk image
  -r, --release string              OS release codename (default "bionic")
  -T, --scripts string              List of scripts to include in addition to the defaults (include full path; separated by comma)
  -s, --size string                 Image size to use (default "5G")
  -v, --variant string              Image variant to use (default "minbase")

Global Flags:
      --base-dir.minimega string   base minimega directory (default "/tmp/minimega")
      --base-dir.phenix string     base phenix directory (default "/phenix")
      --hostname-suffixes string   hostname suffixes to strip
      --log.error-file string      log fatal errors to file (default "/var/log/phenix/error.log")
      --log.error-stderr           log fatal errors to STDERR
      --store.endpoint string      endpoint for storage service (default "bolt:///etc/phenix/store.bdb")

The vmdb2 configuration file can be read by running the following command:

$> phenix cfg get image/<image name>

Building a disk image¶

Building a disk image requires an existing configuration in the store (i.e., the create command should be run first to create a configuration); the phenix image build --help will output:

Build a virtual disk image

  Used to build a new virtual disk using an exisitng configuration; vmdb2 must
  be in path.

Usage:
  phenix image build <configuration name> [flags]

Examples:

  phenix image build <configuration name>
  phenix image build --very-very-verbose --output </path/to/dir/>

Flags:
  -c, --cache               Cache rootfs as tar archive
      --dry-run             Do everything but actually call out to vmdb2
  -h, --help                help for build
  -o, --output string       Specify the output directory for the disk image to be saved to
  -v, --verbose             Enable verbose output
  -w, --very-verbose        Enable very verbose output
  -x, --very-very-verbose   Enable very verbose output plus additional verbose output from debootstrap

Global Flags:
      --base-dir.minimega string   base minimega directory (default "/tmp/minimega")
      --base-dir.phenix string     base phenix directory (default "/phenix")
      --hostname-suffixes string   hostname suffixes to strip
      --log.error-file string      log fatal errors to file (default "/var/log/phenix/error.log")
      --log.error-stderr           log fatal errors to STDERR
      --store.endpoint string      endpoint for storage service (default "bolt:///etc/phenix/store.bdb")

Miscellaneous Commands¶

Append¶

The disk image management tool will allow you to add packages, overlays, and scripts to exisitng configurations using the append command. Command usage is:

$> phenix image append <configuration name> [flags]

Flags are for the overlays, packages, and scripts that you want to append.

Create From an Existing Configuration¶

Run this command if you have an existing configuration that you would like to use as the base to create a new configuration from. The usage involves referencing the existing configuration, the new configuration name, and then additional packages, overlays, and scripts.

$> phenix image create-from <existing configuration> <new configuration> [flags]

Flags are for the overlays, packages, and scripts that you want to add to the new configuration.

Delete¶

$> phenix image delete <image name>

An alternative could be to use the configuration management tool.

$> phenix cfg delete image/<image name>

Remove¶

The remove command will allow you to remove any packages, overlays, and scripts from an existing image configuration.

$> phenix image remove <configuration name> [flags]

Flags are for the overlays, packages, and scripts that you want to remove.

Update¶

This update command is used to update the script on an existing image configuration. The path to a script is tracked in the code. The image configuration gets updated with the script in the path; if no changes were made no harm. If the path no longer exists, phenix will leave the configuration alone.

$> phenix image update <configuration name>

Kali Image¶

The Docker image for phenix includes everything needed to build a Kali image. If phenix is installed locally, the following will be needed to create and build a Kali image.

To build a Kali release on a non-Kali (but still Debian-based) operating system, the following steps must be taken to prepare the host (Debian-based) OS first. These steps are based on the official Kali documentation located at:

https://www.kali.org/tutorials/build-kali-with-live-build-on-debian-based-systems/.

Download and install the latest version of the Kali archive keyring package. At time of writing, the latest version was 2020.2.

$> wget http://http.kali.org/kali/pool/main/k/kali-archive-keyring/kali-archive-keyring_2020.2_all.deb
$> sudo dpkg -i kali-archive-keyring_2020.2_all.deb

Next, create the debootstrap build script for Kali, based entirely off the existing Debian Sid build script. Note that the following commands will likely need to be run as root.

$> cd /usr/share/debootstrap/scripts
$> sed -e "s/debian-archive-keyring.gpg/kali-archive-keyring.gpg/g" sid > kali
$> ln -s kali kali-rolling

At this point, you should be able to build a Kali release with phenix image.