[et-mgmt-tools] Koan 0.2.7 released (WAS: Greatly improved Xen support for koan)

[Michael DeHaan]

Michael DeHaan wrote:
> For those using Cobbler for virtualization installs, I've commited a 
> change to the Mercurial repository that you will probably be 
> interested in. 
> Basically koan now uses the "virtinst" library to install virtualized 
> images rather than using "libvirt" directly.    "virtinst" is the same 
> library that virt-manager uses to install virtual machines.   So, how 
> does this affect the running of koan?
>
> -- The biggest change is that koan now terminates very quickly, with 
> the rest of the virtual installation going on in the background.    
> This allows multiple parallel virtual installs if someone wants to do 
> it.   This should make koan much more usable in batch context.   If 
> you want to watch the installation progress, usage of xm or 
> virt-manager will allow that).
> -- Koan also names each virtual system after the mac address they are 
> created with, such that they are unique.  So no more "xenguest" and 
> "xenguest_1" kind of thing, which was error prone when you installed a 
> machine and then it crashed, causing naming conflicts.   (--xen-name 
> will probably be removed from cobbler also, as it's no longer 
> needed).  If you are using koan with "--system" instead of 
> "--profile", the MAC address can be controlled from cobbler, along 
> with other fine tunning arguments.  If not, it will be randomly 
> generated.   If anyone has any objections to this naming scheme, you 
> might want to speak up.  I can think of a couple of alternate ways to 
> name domains automatically -- "$profilename_$timestamp" isn't so bad.
> -- Koan no longer writes any files to /var/koan -- anywhere, because 
> it doesn't have to.  
> This is still undergoing some testing, but I would call it very stable 
> at this point.   I'm just going to be tweaking output and error 
> handling a bit, if anything.
> Further down the road, this will enable koan to do hardware virtual 
> installs and handle other virtualization types. 
> Note that depending on what distro you are running, Xen will save the 
> configuration files in one of the following:
> /etc/xen
> /var/lib/xen
> /var/run/xen
>
> So, if you have domains that get stopped, looking in those directories 
> will tell you which ones you have to start.   Also on FC6 and later 
> you can experiment with "virsh" for management of inactive domains.
>
> 0.2.7 will probably be released sometime later next week ... unless 
> you want to play with the upstream code (please do, not too many 
> computers have exploded from using it, I promise)
>
> --Michael
>
>
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Koan 0.2.7 (with the above virtualization changes) is now released.    
I've used it quite a bit and it seems all stable and happy.  If you find 
problems, let me know.   Pushed to the Fedora mirrors, otherwise grab 
the RPMs from cobbler.et.redhat.com or build from source.

Thanks,

--Michael