yVM is a very small VM based on TinyCore 5.4 (kernel 3.8.13) and has open-vm-tools, nano, openssh and nginx installed. You can read a story about the the project here. If you want to know how to build your own yVM, please click here.
The current version has following characteristics:
- 1vCPU,
- 48MB RAM,
- 64MB HDD, divided into two partitions:
- one 32MB /dev/sda1 ext3-formatted partition
- one 32MB /dev/sda5 swap partition
- open-vm-tools installed as per instructions from Lapawa + some manual tweaking;
- openssh, nano and basic nginx installation (http only).
- available usernames: tc and root
- password for both accounts: VMware1!
vSphere-compatible OVA: download (Redirection to Google Drive, MD5 checksum: cff70e1fdcc4ef3307ff364e2f93c775).
cloudarchitectblog 
Thanks for the yVM! I used it to demo a vMotion from on-prem to a service provider and recorded the demo, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk8MqyNxUfY. Gave you props in the comments!
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I’m glad to hear about new interesting use cases where yVM could be used!
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I created the VM on my ESXi 6.0, but I have a few problems and questions. I was able to login as “tc” user but with no password. I tried “root” but it would not accept the password you mentioned.
Also, When I typed “ifconfig” to see an IP address, just 127.0.0.1 showed. I expected it would be DHCP and therefore get something in my subnet of 10.9.8.x. Also, I noticed in vSphere consoled it shows “VMware tools not installed”. Did i do something wrong?
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Apologies for a late reply. Following a receipt of your remarks I was curious to test it again. I can confirm that the VM is working fine on both vSphere 5.5 and 6.0 as well as standalone ESXi hosts. It receives an IP address from DHCP and allows me to ssh into it with a root as well as tc accounts with a password I indicated.
My suggestion would be to do the following:
– increase slightly the physical memory size (to 64mb RAM) and try launching the VM again. Although I tested it against a configuration indicated in my article sometimes there might be a need to have more memory to allow all services to run correctly (open-vm-tools included)
– take a time for yVM to load before it gets an IP address from DHCP server. In my infrastructure it took me around 10 seconds after a boot to actually get one.
– a local (console) access to yVM will work without passwords. However, you may try SSHing with putty and see what happens when you try to log on with tc or root account.
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Thanks — your suggestion worked! I increased your default of 48MB RAM to 64MB and it got an IP address from DHCP and it shows the “VMware tools running”. If I “donate” $50 to you, would you be willing to add/install net-snmp to it. I want to use it for testing on a monitoring app that uses SNMP. If you are willing, please set the “community string” to something simple like “mysnmp” because “public” does not allow full information.
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I would be happy to update the original image for free because sharing is caring 🙂 However, I am slightly short on time right now. From what I have seen net-snmp stack is available for Tinycore. After you deploy your copy of yVM into vSphere, can you please type into the CLI: tce-load -iw net-snmp and see if it provides all tools and configuration you are looking for. Please keep in mind that after a reboot all settings will disappear so if you think you’re done and want to save it then follow instructions in my DIY post: https://cloudarchitectblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/11/how-to-build-your-own-yvm-step-by-step-process/
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Hi, Do we have option to include webmin in this version(If it is not going to increase the size of the VM, H/W requirement too much)? If so it will be really helpful for administration purposes
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matanyahu, thanks for this. I deployed quite a few yVM VMs in order to test some vSphere PowerCLI scripts, shutdown VM, increase RAM, boot them back up, and they all behaved brilliantly:-)
I’m now using yVM to test mounting an NFS volumes on a NetApp simulator, without success, which is odd as I am able to mount fine from my Ubuntu VM.
Is there anything specific to yVM that would not allow me mount an NFS volume?
sudo mount -t nfs 192.168.21.120:/NFS01_test /mnt/NFS01_test/
Cheers,
gerg
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Hello,
This tiny Linux can act as NTP server?
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Thanks! Works perfectly. I have posted at my blog (just so I can remember things), but I gave you credit and linked to you site. http://danielfredrick.com/2018/08/tiny-linux-vm-ova/
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Thanks so much for sharing this! There’s a surprising dearth of good example OVAs on the internet, and this one fits the bill nicely— great for testing, homelabs, as an minimal working example, etc.
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