Activation Engine overview

You can find information about the Activation Engine, and the purpose of the framework.

The Activation Engine is an enablement framework used for boot-time customization of virtual images that is executed from the /etc/inittab file and is processed after the initial system boot. It is used to customize the configuration settings of a system by performing functions such as starting the network interface, creating non-default user accounts along with their permissions, and creating new file systems.

The Activation Engine along with the virtual image templates allows a system administrator to use a single virtual image as a source of deployment for multiple systems, that can be customized with their own parameters such as network addresses, custom file systems, and user accounts. The Activation Engine is fully expandable, which means that you can modify the default virtual image template to add custom rules, execute custom scripts, or even add new templates that are processed at boot time. By default, the Activation Engine comes with a standard template with a predefined set of rules such as network, system accounts, file systems, and is designed to allow a user to add custom rules.

The Activation Engine script is used to parse the default virtual image template file, process all rules, and execute subsequent scripts which are linked to the processed rules. The Activation Engine supports the XML format of the template, which serves as a launchpad for calling pre-defined or user-created system customization scripts, with the script parameters being hosted in the virtual image template.