From mgoldman at redhat.com Tue Nov 8 17:19:28 2011 From: mgoldman at redhat.com (Marek Goldmann) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2011 18:19:28 +0100 Subject: [Thincrust-devel] GRUB2 support In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9CB5C37E-34CE-41F4-AC1D-44E968D1325A@redhat.com> I'm using now chroot to install GRUB2, new RPMs available here: http://goldmann.fedorapeople.org/bz/744390/ I've commited the code to upstream repo: http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=appliance-tools.git If you have any comments on the code, this is the right time. Please test it as I want to push it to Fedora ASAP. Thanks! --Marek On 20 pa? 2011, at 17:52, Marek Goldmann wrote: > I made a mistake and my patches are created against old ET repo. I recreated them and built appropriate RPMs: > > http://goldmann.fedorapeople.org/appliance-creator/ > > These are for F16. Please give it a shot. > > --Marek > > On 17 pa? 2011, at 18:20, Marek Goldmann wrote: > >> I have an update, patch attached. This patch should be applied after the main one mentioned previously. >> >> This one adds support for generating grub2 configuration file. It requires the updated grub mentioned before plus an additional patch which allows to specify custom path for scanning for initrd and kernel images. See here: >> >> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=746730 >> >> I've tested this so far with F15 and F16 both with or without a special /boot partition and it seems to work. >> >> What do you think? >> >> --Marek >> >> <0002-Generate-grub2-configuration-file.patch> >> >> On 15 pa? 2011, at 13:03, Marek Goldmann wrote: >> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> This is my first attempt to add support for GRUB2 (and Fedora 16+ ultimately) to appliance-creator. It wasn't trivial unfortunately :( This is still WIP. >>> >>> Keep in mind that the patch requires also patching grub2, more info here: >>> >>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=746394 >>> >>> Known issues: >>> >>> 1. GRUB2 config file *IS NOT* generated at this time. The issue behind is that grub2-mkconfig creates grub.cfg for *host* and uses specifies loopback devices as partition roots in the grub.cfg. If you have idea how it could be done - please share with me. >>> >>> 2. I'm determining what version of grub is packaged only looking at the package list - I do not resolve packages from package groups specified in kickstart file. This means that if you don't have explicitly added a grub/2 package to package list - it'll be not installed. This needs to be fixed. >>> >>> Other questions: >>> >>> 1. We cannot anymore assume that any of grub executable files are installed on the host. What would be the preferred way to execute grub/2 commands? I choose following: >>> >>> a) try to find the executable on the host and try to use it, >>> b) if there is no executable on the host - try to use the one from image >>> >>> If both of above fails - fail the build. Is that ok? >>> >>> 2. If we want to install grub2 on a disk - we need to have a BIOS boot partition, this means that we need to add something like this to our kickstart file: >>> >>> part biosboot --fstype=biosboot --size=1 --ondisk sda >>> >>> Question: should we generate it somehow if not provided or expect it in kickstart file? I'm currently expecting this. >>> >>> OK, that's all for now, please take a look at the patch and let me know what you think. >>> >>> TTYL > > > _______________________________________________ > Thincrust-devel mailing list > Thincrust-devel at redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/thincrust-devel From mgoldman at redhat.com Thu Nov 10 09:32:54 2011 From: mgoldman at redhat.com (Marek Goldmann) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:32:54 +0100 Subject: [Thincrust-devel] partition alignment In-Reply-To: <4D710F68.2000800@computer.org> References: <4D710F68.2000800@computer.org> Message-ID: I pushed the change that makes partition alignment default: http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=appliance-tools.git;a=commitdiff;h=80f9f20db45a65fb4a4ccfbf0e0322ac708b52ec --Marek On 4 mar 2011, at 17:12, Kartik Subbarao wrote: > I notice the following warning message when using appliance-creator: > > Warning: The resulting partition is not properly aligned for best performance. > ['/'] > > I searched around and found various solutions that people suggest for this. But it's also unclear to me how important alignment is for virtual disks. > > Could someone comment on whether this has much/any impact on the performance of the VM? Would it be possible or make sense for appliance-creator to optimize alignment when creating the partition? > > Thanks, From mgoldman at redhat.com Wed Nov 16 13:08:46 2011 From: mgoldman at redhat.com (Marek Goldmann) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:08:46 +0100 Subject: [Thincrust-devel] appliance-tools 006 released Message-ID: <7710E4E6-EE3B-4833-9EB1-BEBB5D67D992@redhat.com> Hi all, Over the weekend I released 006 version which includes: - GRUB2 support - Allow to build appliances without GRUB installed at all - Align partition for best performance - Search for GRUB files in additional directories - makes build of CentOS 6 possible New version were built for F15+: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2011-15966 https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2011-15799 Grab it, test it, let me know if you find some issues. --Marek From henry.s.huang at gmail.com Mon Nov 21 07:52:49 2011 From: henry.s.huang at gmail.com (Henry Huang) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:52:49 +0800 Subject: [Thincrust-devel] ec2-converter on other distributions Message-ID: Hi, all Congratulations for your guys -- a new version of appliance-tools released. I was an engineer working on EC2 support on my product. It is not much time for me to know & use appliance tools (ec2-converter). Actually from your code, I find some hard-coded scripts, like fedora-xen or ami-tools. I wonder whether you have planed to support other distributions on EC2 migration/converter. Besides, will "LVM support" on appliance tools be one feature in the next release? Anyway, I love this tools, thanks for your efforts! Best wishes, Henry, From jboggs at redhat.com Mon Nov 21 19:05:00 2011 From: jboggs at redhat.com (Joey Boggs) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:05:00 -0500 Subject: [Thincrust-devel] ec2-converter on other distributions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4ECAA0DC.4070409@redhat.com> On 11/21/2011 02:52 AM, Henry Huang wrote: > Hi, all > > Congratulations for your guys -- a new version of appliance-tools released. > I was an engineer working on EC2 support on my product. > It is not much time for me to know& use appliance tools (ec2-converter). > Actually from your code, I find some hard-coded scripts, like > fedora-xen or ami-tools. > I wonder whether you have planed to support other distributions on EC2 > migration/converter. > Besides, will "LVM support" on appliance tools be one feature in the > next release? > > Anyway, I love this tools, thanks for your efforts! > > Best wishes, > Henry, > > _______________________________________________ > Thincrust-devel mailing list > Thincrust-devel at redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/thincrust-devel ec2-converter is pretty much stale at this point, you may want to look at boxgrinder which was created around the same time frame and can do what you want and much more. http://boxgrinder.org/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From henry.s.huang at gmail.com Wed Nov 23 06:07:32 2011 From: henry.s.huang at gmail.com (Henry Huang) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:07:32 +0800 Subject: [Thincrust-devel] ec2-converter on other distributions In-Reply-To: <4ECAA0DC.4070409@redhat.com> References: <4ECAA0DC.4070409@redhat.com> Message-ID: Hi, Joey Thanks for your response. I have tried boxgrinder tool to create EC2 AMI. boxgrinder is quite amazing. Some problems still left. 1) seems difficult to use kickstart config directly. boxgrinder appl template cannot add post scripts. I noticed boxgrinder actually generated relevant ks and used appliance-tools to create image. In my opinion, kickstart file as the configuration on the image would be easily maintained for the products based on RHEL/centos. Jeremy Katz has already created a ks-based AMI creator, can be found here: https://github.com/katzj/ami-creator However, it only supports S3 AMI and still on the early way (no multi-users or multi-partition support) 2) current EC2 plugin could only satisfy a little of my requirements a. multi-partition support & further LVM support b. multi-user support i am still on the way of getting more familiar with boxgrinder - maybe these have been solved. do you have any similar problems? maybe we could discuss it. Thanks for your attention. Best wishes, Henry On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 3:05 AM, Joey Boggs wrote: > On 11/21/2011 02:52 AM, Henry Huang wrote: > > Hi, all > > Congratulations for your guys -- a new version of appliance-tools released. > I was an engineer working on EC2 support on my product. > It is not much time for me to know & use appliance tools (ec2-converter). > Actually from your code, I find some hard-coded scripts, like > fedora-xen or ami-tools. > I wonder whether you have planed to support other distributions on EC2 > migration/converter. > Besides, will "LVM support" on appliance tools be one feature in the > next release? > > Anyway, I love this tools, thanks for your efforts! > > Best wishes, > Henry, > > _______________________________________________ > Thincrust-devel mailing list > Thincrust-devel at redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/thincrust-devel > > ec2-converter is pretty much stale at this point, you may want to look at > boxgrinder which was created around the same time frame and can do what you > want and much more. > > http://boxgrinder.org/ > From henry.s.huang at gmail.com Wed Nov 23 10:19:56 2011 From: henry.s.huang at gmail.com (Henry Huang) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:19:56 +0800 Subject: [Thincrust-devel] ec2-converter on other distributions In-Reply-To: <4AF16118-05FE-49CB-85BB-A4214274ADA5@goldmann.pl> References: <4ECAA0DC.4070409@redhat.com> <4AF16118-05FE-49CB-85BB-A4214274ADA5@goldmann.pl> Message-ID: Hi, Marek Thanks for your kind reply. Here are my comments. Best wishes, Henry, On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 5:17 PM, Marek Goldmann wrote: > Henry, > > (We were discussing these issues on IRC, but this also with the list) > > On 23 lis 2011, at 07:07, Henry Huang wrote: > >> 1) seems difficult to use kickstart config directly. > > Kickstart support is not very advertised as it was just a POC. It introduces more issues than solves, so the kickstart support will be removed in the next BoxGrinder major version. > >> boxgrinder appl template cannot add post scripts. I noticed boxgrinder >> actually generated relevant ks and used appliance-tools to create >> image. > > Sure it can. Just inject the script into the appliance using "files" section: > > ? ? ? ?http://boxgrinder.org/tutorials/appliance-definition/#files > > And then execute it in "post" section: > > ? ? ? ?http://boxgrinder.org/tutorials/appliance-definition/#post > [Henry] Ok, i will go through it, and try "post" section part. I agree with you on kickstart issues -- to use kickstart file will restrict BoxGrinder on the Fedora/RHEL/CentOS series. >> 2) current EC2 plugin could only satisfy a little of my requirements >> a. multi-partition support & further LVM support > > In the early days of EC2 the multi-partitioned images were not supported by *AWS*. All EC2 images at that time were filesystem images as opposed to partitioned images. > > This is the reason we went into merging files from different partitions from base disk in to one filesystem in EC2 plugin. > > Of course now it's possible to make partitioned disk images working. I'm not sure if it makes much sense to partition a disk on EC2, though. [Henry] as we know, it is quite easy to attach volumes on EC2 platform. So maybe multi-partition support is not that important. However, for some legacy products, we need to supply the way on upgrade or migration (like P2V). it will be valuable to keep multi-partition support. so does LVM. > >> b. multi-user support > > Add new users in post section. > > --Marek