On Mon, Mar 02, 2009 at 07:57:38PM -0500, John Levon wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 02, 2009 at 07:24:41PM -0500, Cole Robinson wrote:
>
> > Do you think it should be in all relevant man pages (virt-convert,
> > virt-image, virt-install) or just have the other two link back to
> > virt-install?
>
> Just the one please :)
>
> Any thought been given to moving all of osdict into a system-installed
> XML file? The parameters of how different operating systems behave are
> only going to get more complex. Note that OVF will need a similar (in
> fact, most likely more complex) database for the virtual platforms.
Absolutely, this is the long term approach we want to take for a number
of reasons. There's quite a few things I don't like about how we are
currently handling it
- It is not possible for local admins to change / extend it, eg to
add new OS distribution release. It is guarenteed to be out of date
almost as soon as each new virtinst release ships, due to frequency
of new OS distros. This is particularly bad for RHEL with its 6 month
cycle between update releases
- It is tied into virt-install & apps based on it. This makes it hard
to use from Cobbler, oVirt, VMWare, or any other virt provisioning
tool that's not using virt-install python APIs
- It does not include enough information. Type + variant are not really
sufficient. RHEL-5 has updates where new capabilities appear like
virt IO. We really need at least a 4 level grouping for some OS, eg
family (Red Hat), distro (RHEL), release (RHEL5), update (RHEL-5.3).
- It ignores the installation URL information. When doing net installs
user has to specify URL to download.fedora.redhat.com and virtinstall
has the fragile probing to validate this. The OS metadata could easily
include the mirror URLs for any free distro
Todo a better job there's several things I want todo with this:
- An XML schema for defining all the information wrt to guest OS distros
that is relevant to virt management tools.
- A C library for querying the information in the XML file(s).
- Bindings of the C library into Python/Ruby etc as needed
- Ability for local admins to extend / override the information either
by editing the XML files directly, or a pretty GUI
The XML schema is the really important thing, but I think it'd be very
important to have a API around it and not expect apps to read the XML
directly. This is because to get sufficient flexibility without huge
amounts of duplication, I think we'll need to try and keep the XML doc
highly normalized, and not just a plain tree - think more of a structure
like RDF where there are many tree's cross-referencing each other.
I'm attaching an example XML doc I knocked up a few months ago, but I'm
not really happy with it as is. In particular I think rather than trying
todo a explicit 4 level (family, disto, release, update) hierarchy, it
should just be doing an arbitrary generic nested structure, without
imposing specific terminology on each level - there's just too much
difference between the OS out there.
The representation of supported drivers isn't all that great either - albeit
better than current way. I was trying to keep two lists - sets of configs
inheriting from each other, and refernce them from OS distros. This doesn't
capture the full horror of the combinations in the real world though. I
feel it might be better to try and maintain an explicit list of emulated
devices per (hypervisor, release), and an explicit list of supported
device drivers per (os distro, release), then compute the intersection.
Daniel
--
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|: http://libvirt.org -o- http://virt-manager.org -o- http://ovirt.org :|
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|: GnuPG: 7D3B9505 -o- F3C9 553F A1DA 4AC2 5648 23C1 B3DF F742 7D3B 9505 :|
Operating system distributions form a 2-4 level hierarchy depending on
needs
- osinfo
Top level tag for entire database of information
- family
Group of related distributions, typically originating from a single vendor,
but also includin derived / rebuild distros. eg, Red Hat includes Fedora,
RHEL, and CentOS
- distro
A particular distribution within a family, eg RHEL, Fedora, CentOS
- release
Optional. A major release of a distribution, eg Fedora 7, 8, 9
- update
Optional. A minor update release of a distribution, eg RHEL 5.1, 5.2, 5.3
Platform hardware information
- platforms
Grouping of a set of supported platforms. Can occur at any level of
family, distro, release or update. If omitted, information is taken
from parent level.
- arch
A single supported CPU architecture. Ocurrs within platforms.
eg i386, x86_64, ppc, ia64
- virt
A machine ABI supported by an architecture. Occurs within arch.
eg xen, hvm, uml
- config
Name of a configuration describing recommended default hardware
choices for disk, network, input devices. eg virtio vs IDE,
USB tablet vs PS2 mouse. 1 or more instances within virt tag.
Installation media
- media
The installation media choices. Assumes all OS have CD/DVD/ISO
media options.
- site
A single network install site. Can refer to a install tree,
package repository, or package repository mirror list.
Global device configuration information sets
- devices
The set of global device configurations
- config
A named configuration set
- inherit
Other configuration set to derive information from.
- interface
Information on network config, typically bus name.
- disk
Information on disk config, typically bus name and
device prefix
- input
Information on input device config, typically bus
name and device type
<osinfo>
<family id='redhat'>
<name>Red Hat</name>
<distro id='fedora'>
<name>Fedora</name>
<release id='8'>
<name>Fedora 8</name>
<media>
<site type='install' url='http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/$RELEASE/Fedora/$ARCH/os/'/>
<site type='mirrorlist' url='http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-$RELEASE&arch=$ARCH'/>
<site type='repository' url='http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/$RELEASE/Everything/$ARCH/os/'/>
</media>
<platforms>
<arch type='x86_64'>
<virt type='hvm'>
<config name='qemu090io'/>
</virt>
<virt type='xen'>
<config name='xenio'/>
</virt>
</arch>
<arch type='i386'>
<virt type='hvm'>
<config name='qemu090io'/>
</virt>
<virt type='xen'>
<config name='xenio'/>
</virt>
</arch>
<arch type='ppc'>
<virt type='hvm'>
<config name='qemu090io'/>
</virt>
</arch>
</platform>
</release>
<release id='9'>
<name>Fedora 9</name>
<media>
<site type='install' url='http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/$RELEASE/Fedora/$ARCH/os/'/>
<site type='mirrorlist' url='http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-$RELEASE&arch=$ARCH'/>
<site type='repository' url='http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/$RELEASE/Everything/$ARCH/os/'/>
</media>
<platforms>
<arch type='x86_64'>
<virt type='hvm'>
<config name='virtio'/>
</virt>
<virt type='xen'>
<config name='xenio'/>
</virt>
</arch>
<arch type='i386'>
<virt type='hvm'>
<config name='virtio'/>
</virt>
<virt type='xen'>
<config name='xenio'/>
</virt>
</arch>
<arch type='ppc'>
<virt type='hvm'>
<config name='virtio'/>
</virt>
</arch>
</platform>
</release>
</distro>
<distro id='rhel'>
<name>Red Hat Enterprise Linux</name>
<release id='5'>
<name>RHEL 5</name>
<platforms>
<arch type='x86_64'>
<virt type='hvm'>
<config name='qemu090io'/>
</virt>
<virt type='xen'>
<config name='xenio'/>
</virt>
</arch>
<arch type='i386'>
<virt type='hvm'>
<config name='qemu090io'/>
</virt>
<virt type='xen'>
<config name='xenio'/>
</virt>
</arch>
<arch type='ia64'>
<virt type='hvm'>
<config name='qemu090io'/>
</virt>
<virt type='xen'>
<config name='xenio'/>
</virt>
</arch>
</platform>
<update id='5.1'>
<name>RHEL 5.1</name>
</update>
<update id='5.2'>
<name>RHEL 5.2</name>
</update>
<update id='5.3'>
<name>RHEL 5.3</name>
<platforms>
<arch type='x86_64'>
<virt type='hvm'>
<config name='virtio'/>
</virt>
</arch>
<arch type='i386'>
<virt type='hvm'>
<config name='virtio'/>
</virt>
</arch>
<arch type='ia64'>
<virt type='hvm'>
<config name='virtio'/>
</virt>
</arch>
</platforms>
</update>
</release>
</distro>
</family>
<family id='redhat'>
<name>MicroSoft Windows</name>
<distro id='winxp'>
<name>MicroSoft Windows XP</name>
<platforms>
<arch type='i386'>
<virt type='hvm'>
<config name='qemu080io'/>
<config name='usbinput'/>
</virt>
</arch>
</distro>
<distro id='win2k8'>
<name>MicroSoft Windows 2008 Server</name>
<platforms>
<arch type='i386'>
<virt type='hvm'>
<config name='qemu090io'/>
<config name='usbinput'/>
</virt>
</arch>
<arch type='x86_64'>
<virt type='hvm'>
<config name='qemu090io'/>
<config name='usbinput'/>
</virt>
</arch>
</platforms>
</distro>
</family>
<devices>
<config name='qemu080io'>
<interface>
<model type='rtl8139'/>
</interface>
<disk>
<target bus='ide' prefix='hd'/>
</disk>
</config>
<config name='qemu090io'>
<inherit config='qemu080io'>
<interface>
<model type='e1000'/>
</interface>
<disk>
<target bus='scsi' prefix='sd'/>
</disk>
</config>
<config name='virtio'>
<inherit config='qemu090io'/>
<interface>
<model type='virtio'/>
</interface>
<disk>
<target bus='virtio' prefix='vd'/>
</disk>
</config>
<config name='xenio'>
<interface>
<model type='xen'/>
</interface>
<disk>
<target bus='xen' prefix='xvd'/>
</disk>
</config>
<config name='usbinput'>
<input bus='usb' type='tablet'/>
</config>
</devices>
</osinfo>
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