Gavin's notes on getting gitian builds up and running using KVM: These instructions distilled from: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM/Installation ... see there for complete details. You need the right hardware: you need a 64-bit-capable CPU with hardware virtualization support (Intel VT-x or AMD-V). Not all modern CPUs support hardware virtualization. You probably need to enable hardware virtualization in your machine's BIOS. You need to be running a recent version of 64-bit-Ubuntu, and you need to install several prerequisites: sudo apt-get install ruby apache2 git apt-cacher-ng python-vm-builder qemu-kvm Sanity checks: sudo service apt-cacher-ng status # Should return apt-cacher-ng is running ls -l /dev/kvm # Should show a /dev/kvm device Once you've got the right hardware and software: git clone git://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git git clone git://github.com/devrandom/gitian-builder.git mkdir gitian-builder/inputs cd gitian-builder/inputs # Inputs for Linux and Win32: wget 'http://miniupnp.tuxfamily.org/files/download.php?file=miniupnpc-1.6.tar.gz' wget 'http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/qrencode-3.2.0.tar.bz2' # Inputs for Win32: (Linux has packages for these) wget 'https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/boost/boost/1.50.0/boost_1_50_0.tar.bz2' wget 'http://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.0.1b.tar.gz' wget 'http://download.oracle.com/berkeley-db/db-4.8.30.NC.tar.gz' wget 'https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/libpng/zlib/1.2.6/zlib-1.2.6.tar.gz' wget 'https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/libpng/libpng15/older-releases/1.5.9/libpng-1.5.9.tar.gz' wget 'ftp://ftp.trolltech.com/qt/source/qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.7.4.tar.gz' cd ../.. cd gitian-builder bin/make-base-vm --arch i386 bin/make-base-vm --arch amd64 cd .. # Build Linux release: cd bitcoin git pull cd ../gitian-builder git pull ./bin/gbuild --commit bitcoin=HEAD ../bitcoin/contrib/gitian-descriptors/gitian.yml # Build Win32 dependencies: ./bin/gbuild --commit bitcoin=HEAD ../bitcoin/contrib/gitian-descriptors/boost-win32.yml ./bin/gbuild --commit bitcoin=HEAD ../bitcoin/contrib/gitian-descriptors/deps-win32.yml ./bin/gbuild --commit bitcoin=HEAD ../bitcoin/contrib/gitian-descriptors/qt-win32.yml # Build Win32 release: ./bin/gbuild --commit bitcoin=HEAD ../bitcoin/contrib/gitian-descriptors/gitian-win32.yml --------------------- gitian-builder now also supports building using LXC. See https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/serverguide/lxc.html ... for how to get LXC up and running under Ubuntu. If your main machine is a 64-bit Mac or PC with a few gigabytes of memory and at least 10 gigabytes of free disk space, you can gitian-build using LXC running inside a virtual machine. Here's a description of Gavin's setup on OSX 10.6: 1. Download and install VirtualBox from https://www.virtualbox.org/ 2. Download the 64-bit Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 LTS .iso CD image from http://www.ubuntu.com/ 3. Run VirtualBox and create a new virtual machine, using the Ubuntu .iso (see the VirtualBox documentation for details). Create it with at least 2 gigabytes of memory and a disk that is at least 20 gigabytes big. 4. Inside the running Ubuntu desktop, install: sudo apt-get install debootstrap lxc ruby apache2 git apt-cacher-ng python-vm-builder 5. Still inside Ubuntu, tell gitian-builder to use LXC, then follow the "Once you've got the right hardware and software" instructions above: export USE_LXC=1 git clone git://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git ... etc