[Libguestfs] Xen drivers for virt-builder images

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 03:12:46PM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> 
> Not quite as easy as I imagined.  However by using the attached patch
> I have managed to add the two Xen drivers to the initramfs.  (I
> haven't been able to test that it boots in Xen however)
> 
> I'm just building an updated Fedora 20 image which I'll upload later
> today.

The F20 image has been uploaded.  You should notice when you install
it that it will download the full disk image again, and also that
a file "fedora-20.x86_64.2" will be created in ~/.cache/virt-builder/
(.2 == revision 2)

I tried various experiments, and it seems as if the Xen modules are
included in the initramfs even if you upgrade the kernel when running
virt-builder itself.  So all looks good over here, but I didn't
actually try booting the disk image on Xen itself.

While I have your attention ...

It'd be great if libguestfs could use Xen as a backend (in addition to
current qemu, KVM and UML backends).  Most likely that would involve
one of two approaches:

(1) Modify the libvirt backend (src/launch-libvirt.c) so it works
properly when the hypervisor is Xen.  If you buy into libvirt, this
one is probably going to be less code.

(2) Add a new backend (src/launch-xl.c ?) which uses native Xen APIs
to create the appliance.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
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