On Tue, 22 Sep 2020 at 16:48, Cole Robinson <crobinso@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 9/20/20 4:46 PM, Peter Crowther wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Sep 2020 at 21:10, Cole Robinson <crobinso@xxxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:crobinso@xxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> [...]
>
> 2) Default to --os-variant detect=on,name=<virtio-something>. 'give me
> virtio' is representative of what most virt-install users want. But this
> adds some new corner cases, ex if anyone is using virt-install with
> windows up until now they could get away without specifying a
> --os-variant and things would generally work, but now if we default to
> virtio windows out of the box is not going to install. I kinda doubt
> many people are using virt-install with windows though.
>
>
> As feedback, this is the single largest use case in the main
> virtualisation cluster I manage. CentOS hosts, 90% Windows 7(!) and 8.1
> guests. We have our virt-install scripted to add a floppy drive with
> autoinstall file, virtio drivers, and a few other bits and pieces like a
> minimal puppet client install (surprisingly non-trivial in Windows 7
> gold), so we could live with such a change; but please don't assume that
> if the hosts are Linux then the guests are also likely to be Linux.
>
But presumably you are already specifying an --os-variant though? In
which case you would be fine even if the default changes.
Yes, we are.
On the principle of least surprise, I would suggest "Option 3" of your two suggestions: virt-install warns but succeeds for such an install. I don't think it's unreasonable to default to slower emulated hardware rather than virtio as long as the user gets a reasonably helpful notice that virt-install doesn't know what else to do so has gone for a slow fail-safe.
Cheers,
- Peter
