KIWI is a full-blown imaging suite that allows you configure, build and deploy your own operating system images. The KIWI workflow is divided into three distinct stages:
Determine which packages are installed on your image and which configuration files are included with the image. Create a directory holding the contents of the new file system from a software package source such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and create an image description file, (config.xml). The resulting infrastructure is referred to as the physical extend. For a detailed description of the image configuration procedure, refer to Section 7.2, Preparing the Image Configuration.
The image itself is created using the data gathered in the physical extend. The resulting image is called logical extend. The image creation process does not require user interaction, but can be fine-tuned by modifying the images.sh script that is called during the creation process. For a detailed description of the image creation procedure, refer to Section 7.3, Creating the KIWI Image.
The final image can be deployed using various different methods. SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service supports PXE net boot, live system images and USB stick images.
HINT: Using SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service Image Templates
SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service provides several templates that may be used to create new images. All the delivered templates are stored below /usr/share/kiwi/image/SLEPOS/. When using these templates, copy contents of the directory that contains the respective configuration to a new subdirectory below /var/lib/SLEPOS/system/.