Virtualization
In this section, we cover discussion of Fedora virtualization technologies on the @fedora-virt, @fedora-xen-list, and @libvirt-list lists.
Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley
Fedora Virtualization List
This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-virt list.
Guest Bridge Configuration with libvirt and netcf
Andrés García thought[1] he read somewhere that with Fedora 12 there was going to be a way to configure virtual network bridges automagically", but was only aware of the manual[2] means of configuration.
It is possible in to configure bridges using virsh
thanks to the Network Interface Management[3] feature and
[4]. However, the process is manual and not in the GUI. Dale Bewley blogged[5] about how to manually create a bridge in Fedora 12 using netcf
virsh
.
Support for
integration is targeted[6] for Fedora 13.
virt-manager
- ↑ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-November/msg00002.html
- ↑ http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/Networking#Bridged_networking_.28aka_.22shared_physical_device.22.29
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Network_Interface_Management
- ↑ http://linux-kvm.com/content/netcf-silver-bullet-network-configuration
- ↑ http://tofu.org/drupal/node/86
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Shared_Network_Interface
New Release libguestfs 1.0.78
Richard Jones announced[1]
version 1.0.78 of
[2], the library for accessing and modifying virtual machine filesystems.
libguestfs
New Features:
- FUSE support so you can mount guest filesystems in the host [3]
- Support for btrfs, gfs, gfs2, hfs, hfs+, nilfs2, jfs, reiserfs, xfs[4]
- Support for huge (multi-exabyte) sparse virtual disks[5]
- New partitioning API, supports GPT and more[6]
- New tools:
- Windows Registry support, tools and library[11] [12]
- OCaml bindings for
virt-inspector
- RELAX NG schema for
virt-inspector
- New APIs:
utimens
,vfs_type
,truncate
,truncate_size
,lchown
,lstatlist
,lxattrlist
,readlinklist
,case_sensitive_path
,find0
,mkfs_b
,mke2journal
,and more ...
- New program: OCaml viewer[13]
- Allow stdout to be redirected when running guestfish remotely (Matt Booth).
- Remove requirement for vmchannel support in qemu (horray!) and the tricky main loop code.
- ↑ http://www.redhat.com/archives/virt-tools-list/2009-November/msg00023.html
- ↑ http://libguestfs.org/
- ↑ http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/browsing-guests-using-fuse/
- ↑ http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/filesystem-metadata-overhead/
- ↑ http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/petabytes-exabytes-why-not/
- ↑ http://libguestfs.org/guestfs.3.html#guestfs_part_add
- ↑ http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/new-tool-virt-ls/
- ↑ http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/new-tool-virt-tar/
- ↑ http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/virt-edit/
- ↑ http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/virt-rescue/
- ↑ http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/virt-win-reg-get-at-the-windows-registry-in-your-windows-guests/
- ↑ http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/libhivex-windows-registry-hive-extractor-library/
- ↑ http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/graphical-virt-df/
Fedora Xen List
This section contains the discussion happening on the
fedora-xen list.
No Xen dom0 in Fedora 12 Hopefully 13
Zhang Enming
was disappointed[1] to learn[2] the pv_ops dom0 support[3] for hosting Xen guests, dropped in Fedora 9, is still not present in Fedora 12.
Zhang referenced numerous videos documenting success in creating "a fully working Xen pv-ops dom0 Fedora 11 host operating system."
While there are experimental patches which may be applied[4] [5] to the kernel to enable support for dom0, they are not yet in the upstream kernel which forms the basis the Fedora kernel package.
It was decided[6] two years ago this month that
Fedora "simply cannot spend more time forward porting Xen kernels" and
"the plan is to re-focus 100% of all Xen kernel efforts onto paravirt_ops."
See FWN#137.[7]
Pasi Kärkkäinen
noted[8]
"pv_ops dom0 kernel has only recently started working for many/most
people, so it was too late for F12 release" and
"There are still some missing features, most notably missing blktap2 support
for tap:aio: file-based images."
- ↑ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2009-November/msg00019.html
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Virtualization
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue190#Dom0_Kernel_Status
- ↑ http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenParavirtOps
- ↑ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2007-November/msg00106.html
- ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue137#kernel-xen_is_Dead
- ↑ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2009-November/msg00020.html
Libvirt List
This section contains the discussion happening on the
libvir-list.
Keeping Guest Configurations in Sync on Multiple Hosts
Thomas Treutner
asked[1] "is there any best-practice how to keep VM definitions in sync across a couple of hosts? Is it reasonable to put /etc/libvirt/qemu/
on a NFS share?"
Matthias Bolte
explained[2] "No, it's not safe to share /etc/libvirt/qemu/
", but also didn't find it necessary to keep the configs in sync.
"A migrated domain stays defined on the source node and is transient on
the destination node. A transient domain has no persistent config on
its node and is lost when destroyed."
Matthias mentioned a patch[3] to the virDomainMigrate
[4] function by Chris Lalancette which will be in
libvirt
0.7.3.
The patch adds a new flag which will allow domains to be migrated persistently. Version 0.7.3 is targeted[5]
for release on November 20th.
- ↑ http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-November/msg00495.html
- ↑ http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-November/msg00498.html
- ↑ http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-October/msg00318.html
- ↑ http://www.libvirt.org/html/libvirt-libvirt.html#virDomainMigrate
- ↑ http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-November/msg00480.html