[et-mgmt-tools] [PATCH 09 of 11] Add OS variant options to virt-convert

[David Lutterkort]

On Tue, 2008-07-08 at 13:49 +0100, John Levon wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 01:30:42PM +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> 
> > > Add OS variant options to virt-convert.
> > > 
> > > And use them to set ACPI, APIC, clock, and USB tablet.
> > 
> > Again, I don't think libvirt domain XML should be handled by this tool
> > precisely because of the issues you're attempting to address here.
> 
> What do you mean "again" ?
> 
> libvirt is only part of the problem: it's not the only virt format with
> hypervisor specific settings. Even if you were to enforce the use of
> virt-image, you've still got the same problems if we ever want true
> mobility between other formats.
> 
> Even worse, the image XML is very lossy. Whilst I imagine that
> virt-image will *typically* be used, enforcing an information-removing
> step doesn't make much sense to me.

As far as this patch is concernd, ACPI and APIC can be requested in the
virt-image XML; and clock and USB tablet should probably be added to it.
The clock setting is a little weird, but I can imagine scenarios where
that's not really a deployment specific option (or one that sets a
default that can be overridden)

What other VM attributes do you need to preserve ? Other things like MAC
address fall into the category of 'needed in some cases, but not in
others' IMHO

> And finally, there is currently no way to generate image XML from a
> domain config (AFAIK). 

Yes, that's definitely a gap.

> So we want this for libvirt import anyway.

Are you talking about a libvirt -> VMWare etc. conversion or something
else ?

David