FWN/Beats/Virtualization

Virtualization

In this section, we cover discussion on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list, @fedora-xen-list, @libvirt-list and @ovirt-devel-list of Fedora virtualization technologies.

Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley

Enterprise Management Tools List

This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list

Enabling Builds of libvirt for Windows

Richard W.M. Jones sought[1] help in enabling builds of Windows libvirt binaries under Fedora. "It seems like we should have the base MinGW (Windows cross-compiler) packages in Fedora 11 by the end of this week. This email is to document the additional packages we need to get approved, in order to get the cross-compiled libvirt and virt tools into (or buildable by) Fedora 11.

If you want to help out, please start reviewing by following the Bugzilla links, and looking at the approved packaging guidelines[2]"

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-November/msg00073.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/MinGW.

Solaris Support in virtinst

John Levon submitted several patches to improve Solaris support in python-virtinst including and not limited to the following:

• Add an option for passing Solaris JumpStart information.[1]
• Various utility functions[2].
• "Make 'solaris' a first-class OS type, and select USB tablet support for the appropriate variants."[3]
• Add support for Solaris PV.[4]
• Support for the vdisk format[5]. John explained "vdisk is basically " Sun's " tap implementation and disk management tool.

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-December/msg00062.html

[2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-December/msg00063.html

[3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-December/msg00064.html

[4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-December/msg00065.html

[5] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-December/msg00067.html

Fedora Xen List

This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list.

Support for Fedora 10 DomU on F8 Dom0

The changes[1] made to the kernel which obviated kernel-xen caused python-virtinst to fail[2] during the creation of a Fedora 10 Xen guest on a Fedora 8 Xen host.

Cole Robinson announced[3] a test build[4] which fixes this problem. Readers are encouraged to test the release and provide positive karma points in bodhi[5] to make the build an official update.

[1] http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f10/en_US/What_Do_System_Adminstrators_Care_About.html#sn-Unified_kernel_image

[2] RHBZ #458164

[3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-November/msg00036.html

[4] http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=71125

[5] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F8/FEDORA-2008-10394

Paravirt Ops Dom0 Feature Update

After some prompting[1] from Pasi Kärkkäinen the dom0 support feature page[2] was updated to better clarify where the work to bring dom0 support back to Fedora is being done, and to more accurately represent the current status.

The patches[3] are being written by Jeremy Fitzhardinge and others at Citrix/XenSource are being submitted to the mainline kernel. Once accepted in the upstream kernel, efforts will resume within Fedora to make the changes necessary to support dom0. These efforts include[4] ensuring the hypervisor supports bzImage kernels.

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-November/msg00021.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0

[3] http://xenbits.xen.org/paravirt_ops/patches.hg/

[4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-November/msg00025.html

Libvirt List

This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list.

Release of libvirt 0.5.0 and 0.5.1

Daniel Veillard announced[1][2] the releases of libvirt 0.5.0 and 0.5.1. "This is a long expected release, with a lot of new features, as a result the small version number is increased." Tarballs and signed RPMs available upstream[3] and in Bodhi[4].

"As stated there is a huge amount of new features and improvement in this release, as well as a lot of bug fixes, the list is quite long". See the post[1] for the full list including the numerous improvments, documentation updates, bug fixes, and cleanups omitted below.

New features:

• CPU and scheduler support for LXC (Dan Smith)
• SDL display configuration (Daniel Berrange)
• domain lifecycle event support for QEmu and Xen with python bindings (Ben Guthro and Daniel Berrange)
• KVM/QEmu migration support (Rich Jones and Chris Lalancette)
• User Mode Linux driver (Daniel Berrange)
• API for node device enumeration using HAL and DeviceKit with python bindings (David Lively)

"Thanks a lot to everybody who contributed to this release, it is really great to see new people providing significant patches, and the amount of feedback received on the list."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00387.html

[2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-December/msg00148.html

[3] ftp://libvirt.org/libvirt/

[4] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/libvirt

Allow Automatic Driver Probe for Remote TCP Connections

Later described by the release of libvirt 0.5.1 as an improvement, Daniel P. Berrange posted[1] the patch to implement a more general method for connecting to remote[2] hypervisor drivers.

"When connecting to a local libvirt you can let it automatically probe the hypervisor URI if you don't know it ahead of time. This doesn't work with remote URIs because you need to have something to put in the URI scheme before the hostname:

• qemu+ssh://somehost/system
• xen+tcp://somehost/system

This is then translated into the URI:

• qemu:///system
• xen:///

...

This patch adds a 'remote' URI scheme, usable like this:

• remote+ssh://somehost/
• remote+tcp://somehost/

...

This finally makes the Avahi[3] broadcasts useful - they only include info on the hostname + data transport (SSH, TCP, TLS), not the HV type. So letting us use auto-probing remotely is the missing link."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00420.html

[2] http://libvirt.org/remote.html

[3] http://www.avahi.org

Thread Safety for libvirtd Daemon and Drivers

Daniel P. Berrange posted[1] a huge series of 28 patches which add "thread safety for the libvirtd daemon and drivers, and makes the daemon multi-threaded in processing RPC calls. This enables multiple clients to be processed in parallel, without blocking each other. It does not change the thread rules for the virConnectPtr object though, so each individual client is still serialized." ... "This touches a huge amount of code, so I'd like to get this all merged ASAP as it'll be really hard to keep it synced with ongoing changes."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00453.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue148#Experimental_Driver_Thread_Safety

libvirt 0.5.0 and KVM Migration Support

Mickaël Canévet wondered[1] if kvm guest migration was expected to be functional. "I just installed libvirt 0.5.0 on Debian Lenny with kvm 0.72 to try kvm migration support." Tests failed with "libvir: error : this function is not supported by the hypervisor: virDomainMigrate."

Chris Lalancette confirmed[2] "Yes, it is supposed to work, but yes, you need a very, very new kvm. In particular, you need at least kvm-77, and it won't really work right until you get to kvm-79."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-December/msg00025.html

[2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-December/msg00027.html

oVirt Devel List

This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list.