[fedora-virt] libguestfs broken dependencies on Fedora 10

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 12:21:11PM +0200, Ján ONDREJ (SAL) wrote:
> I think it's less disturbing for user, but may be harder for packager.
> Another way can be to add only binary to libguestfs sources, but it's not an
> opensource way.

No way ...

> > I also had a go at backporting the changes to qemu that we ship in
> > F-10.  qemu in F-10 is based on qemu 0.9, and doesn't include the
> > vmchannel patch.  The vmchannel patch looks deceptively simple:
> > 
> > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2009-02/msg01042.html
> > 
> > However when I started to backport it, I discovered that the patch
> > depends on many extra functions and features added to slirp since
> > qemu 0.9.  I ended up with a qemu which compiled, but kept
> > segfaulting, and it was tricky to diagnose exactly why.
> 
> Hmm, even if I don't use KVM in Fedora 10 for production, may be somebody
> uses, so playing with this package in a stable system is not a good idea.
> 
> Backporting changes to qemu-0.9 may be the right way, just we can pray to
> not end with totally non-functional qemu (like your segfaulting).

If you want to have a go at backporting that patch ...

> > Is it really a problem to use the libguestfs and/or qemu packages from
> > Fedora 11 builds?  You can grab the latest builds out of Koji:
> > 
> > http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/search?match=glob&type=package&terms=libguestfs
> > http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/search?match=glob&type=package&terms=qemu
> > 
> > This worked OK for me, although I have now moved to using Fedora
> > 11-Preview, and have mostly abandoned Fedora 10.
> 
> There are still problems with qemu-0.10 on some systems. Look at least for
> my bugs 499601 or 499596. I also can't install 11-Preview on qemu-0.10 with
> in graphics mode.

These need to be fixed.  I've found and Mark has fixed at least one
other bug in qemu 0.10 too.

Another alternative for you is to build libguestfs from the devel
specfile here:

http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewvc/devel/libguestfs/

However in general terms I don't think there's a good solution for
libguestfs in Fedora 10, unless (a) we have a broken runtime with a
good error message that tells people they need to upgrade qemu, and
(b) we can backport the vmchannel support into qemu 0.9.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat  http://et.redhat.com/~rjones
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