The Kata Containers runtime creates a virtual machine (VM) to isolate a set of container workloads. The VM requires a guest kernel and a guest operating system ("guest OS") to boot and create containers inside the guest environment.
This repository contains tools to create a guest OS disk image.
This section describes the terms used for all documentation in this repository.
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rootfs
The root filesystem or "rootfs" is the set of files contained in the guest root directory that builds into a filesystem.
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"Guest OS" (or "Guest Image")
A "virtual disk" or "disk image" built from a rootfs. It contains a filesystem that is used by the VM, in conjunction with a guest kernel, to create an environment to host the container. Neither the guest OS nor the guest kernel need to be the same as the host operating system.
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initrd (or "initramfs")
A compressed cpio archive loaded into memory and used as part of the Linux startup process. During startup, the kernel unpacks it into a special instance of a tmpfs that becomes the initial root file system.
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"Base OS"
A particular version of a Linux distribution used to create a Guest OS from.