[fedora-virt] Fedora virtualization -- comments and questions

[Gerry Maddock]

 From: Gene Czarcinski <gene at czarc.net>
> I am a newcomer to Fedora (linux) virtualization.  However, I have
> been a long
> time user of VMware products running first on Red Hat Linux and thenon
Fedora.
>
> When I recently acquired a CPU with hardware virtualization support (AMD
> Phenom II 940), I decided to "change my problem set" and give Fedora
> Virtualization a try ... specifically qemu/kvm/etc.
>
> I use virtuals for three purposes: 1) To test software which might
destroy a
> system or testing which requires a lot of re-booting.  2) For development

> environment to build rpm packages for various systems, i386/x86_64, etc.
3)
> To run windows.
>
> OK, install the virtualization packages and then install a simple Fedora
11
> guest ... naturally it worked fine.
>
> Now lets get down to real business since I would be installing/running a
> number of virtual systems.  The first thing I found was that
> configuration files,
> disk images, etc. were scattered but mostly under /etc/libvirt and
> /var/lib/libvirt.  I looked for a runtime parameter which specified where

> things were to be stored but did not find anything.  Furthermore, all of
this
> stuff was in the root ("/") partition and, when I upgraded to the
> next release,
> a pain to bring across.
>
> I have three suggestions (I will put these in bugzilla as soon as
> someone says
> what package they should be filed against):
>
> 1. Put all files (disk images, configuration, etc.) under a single
directory
> (easier to manage).
>
> 2. Provide a virtualization configuration parameter for setting the top
> directory to be used to store virtualization files (make it easier to get

> things out of root).
>
> 3. Do not require DVD/CD ISO images to be in the image directory and do
not
> screw with SELinux settings on ISO files.
>
> For those unfamiliar with it, this is more or less how VMware stuff
> sets things
> up.
>
> So much for wishful thinking, how do I make things easier (and get the
files
> out of root)?
>
> OK, what I have come up with is to create a separate partition for all of
the
> files and then "bind mount" it to /var/lib/libvirt and /etc/libvirt.
>
> Does this make sense?  Is this going to work? Any other suggestions?

I have been using qemu-kvm pretty much since it was 1st released. All of my
images have always defaulted to /var/lib/libvirt/images/ and have never
been "scattered" or anywhere else such as /root. As far as I know CD/DVD
ISO images could be stored where ever you wanted them (mine never default
to /var/lib/libvirt/). Not sure by what you mean by: "and do not screw with
SELinux settings on ISO files".





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