Ubuntu is the reference platform for OpenStack. We follow the Ubuntu release cycle very closely, and do most of our QA on Ubuntu.

If you want to run OpenStack on Ubuntu, there are a few options, depending on your stability requirements and which version of Ubuntu you're running.

Ubuntu version	Only what is in Ubuntu	Only stable releases
10.04 LTS (Lucid)	N/A	Release PPA
10.10 (Maverick)	Pre-Austin snapshot	Release PPA
11.04 (Natty)	Frequent snapshots.< >Cactus expected in final release	Release PPA

Trunk PPA

A PPA<<FootNote(Personal Package Archive: an extra apt repository you can add to your sources.list to get access to software not in Ubuntu.)>> where we will upload a new version for every single commit on trunk.

Information and instructions for use can be found on Launchpad for Nova, and similarly for Swift and Glance.

The packages are built by grabbing the latest tarball from http://nova.openstack.org/tarballs/ -- add 'debian' directory from lp:~openstack-ubuntu-packagers/ubuntu/natty/nova/ubuntu (nova) or lp:~openstack-ubuntu-packagers/ubuntu/natty/swift/ubuntu (swift) on top of it. Now add a changelog entry (dch -i -n). Make packages by running ./builddeb.sh.

Release PPA

Information and instructions for use can be found on Launchpad for Nova, and similarly for Swift and Glance..

A PPA<<FootNote(Personal Package Archive: an extra apt repository you can add to your sources.list to get access to software not in Ubuntu.)>> where we will upload only final releases.

Generating packages manually

Prerequisites

You'll need to install some packages on the build machine. Some of them are in the nova-core PPA, so add it as a repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nova-core/ppa
sudo apt-get update

During the build process, you will be informed about which packages are missing from your system, but there are some additional packages that are required for building the documentation:

sudo apt-get install python-greenlet python-rrdtool

You'll need Sphinx 1.0 or greater for doing the build or the documentation generation will fail and the build will abort. You can check what version of Sphinx is being used by your version of Python by doing:

python -c "import sphinx; print sphinx.__version__"

Finally, you'll need the following packages on your system to be able to generate the packages:

sudo apt-get install dpkg-dev quilt debhelper

Generating binary packages

Combine the main nova code with the packaging scripts:

bzr export nova lp:nova
bzr export nova-packaging lp:~openstack-ubuntu-packagers/ubuntu/natty/nova/ubuntu
mv nova-packaging/debian nova

Edit the changelog entry. The following commands will specify a Lucid package with version "2011.1-0ubuntu2-local1" and a changelog entry "Local build for internal testing"

cd nova
dch -v 2011.1-0ubuntu2-local1 -D lucid "Local build for internal testing"

If you're building for Lucid, you need to issue the following command to apply the debian/patches/nova-manage_flagfile_location.patch patch file before building the packages.

QUILT_PATCHES=debian/patches quilt push -a

Generate the packages:

./builddeb.sh

The packages will appear in the parent of the nova directory.

Uploading custom packages to PPA

Create a PPA with the following PPA dependencies:

nova-core/build-depends
nova-core/release

Then issue the following commands from the root of your nova directory.

GPGKEY=... # Your registered OpenGPG key 
LPNAME=... # Your Launchpad username
DIST="lucid" # The Ubuntu distribution you are targetting
VERSTRING="2011.3-my-custom-build-0ubuntu1" # Custom version string here
dch  -v "$VERSTRING" -D $DIST "Your changelog comment here"

# If building for Lucid, apply the patch manually, otherwise skip this step
QUILT_PATCHES=debian/patches quilt push -a

dpkg-buildpackage -S -sa -rfakeroot -tc -D -k$GPGKEY 
cd ..
# Upload the packages
dput ppa:${LPNAME}/ppa nova_${VERSTRING}_source.changes

Packaging/Ubuntu