[Libvir] feature sujestions

[Michael DeHaan]

Daniel Veillard wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 23, 2007 at 12:41:22PM -0400, Michael DeHaan wrote:
>   
>> Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>> Some distributed stuff to complement the remote features above:   
>> Cobbler (http://cobbler.et.redhat.com) integration with virt-manager for 
>> being able to graphically pick what profile the user wants to install 
>> from a list of remote boot servers.   (There's an XMLRPC API for this), 
>> and also ways to configure the boot server from a simple GTK app (not 
>> part of virt-manager).      This could be of use where people want to 
>> roll out configurations that someone else has set up for them, but they 
>> are not comfortable with the command line tools.   Perhaps it would be 
>> possible to export a set of virt-manager settings to Cobbler for reuse 
>> by virt-manager users on other machines.
>>     
>
>    I agree we need something along those lines, and IMHO if they are more
> comfortable using point and click, I guess they would also prefer have
> automatic discovery of where cobbler was installed. Do we have (or could
> add) avahi support for discovery of the service.

Added a few days ago upstream, yes (0.6.1 candidate). You have to 
install avahi-tools, it's not a hard RPM requires, but if it's there, 
cobbler will publish as "cobblerd".

>  If most install options
> could be centralized (think like an automatic setup template based for
> example on the user LDAP info), provisioning for a new user could come
> as simple an UI as:
>     "A centralized setting si available, pick one of the OSes"
>       "Fedora 7"
>       "Fedora 6"
>       "Centos 5"
>       ...
>   
Right now Cobbler is all hierarchial (distros -> profiles -> systems) 
and there's a XMLRPC API. So you could have a drop down "pick your 
distro" and then be
able to pick your profile under the distro. You could optionally be able 
to pick a system definition (which includes a MAC address) to deploy but 
it would fine
to leave that out if it didn't make sense.

> maybe even the processor count and memory size could be defaulted
> from the centalized profiles.
> Yes you can do this already from the CLI, but being able to make it
> trivial and integrated in the virtmanager GUI, would probably make a 
> big difference in usability.
>   

Yep, I like this.

A good way to fine defaults for each distro would be to see if there is 
a default profile named after the distro, which is what "cobbler import"
creates today if you feed it a DVD or rsync mirror. Or they could 
optionally pick another profile, and have the option of refining choices 
either way.
>   
>> libvirt/virt-manager guys are welcome to overrule that suggestion, as 
>> the previous suggestions are already great :)
>>     
>
>   Nah, but one thing is sure, there is plenty of things interesting
> to work on :-)
>
> Daniel
>
>