[virt-tools-list] --initrd-inject into old distributions

[Cole Robinson]

On 04/19/2012 05:03 PM, Magnus Fromreide wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> In old distributions initrd.img is a compressed ext2 filesystem and not
> a cpio image, but virt-install fails to detect this and happily appends
> a chunk of gzipped cpio data to the end of the file system.
> 
> When the image is then booted you end up with a message telling you that
> there is no ks file in the initrd image.
> 
> I think virt-install should detect the type of the image and, if it of
> the wrong kind, give an error.
> 
> I further think it would be nice if it could work with ancient
> distributions.
> 
> Tested version:
>         Fedora 16 - python-virtinst-0.600.1-1.fc16.noarch
> 
> How to reproduce:
> 
>         virt-install --blabla --location=some-ancient-distribution-like-rh4 --initrd-inject=my.ks -x ks=file:/my.ks
> 
> What happens:
> 
>         The virtual machine is created and stops after a while,
>         complaining about my.ks not beeing in the file system
> 
> Expected result:
> 
>         Either an error from virt-installer about bad file format or
>         success
> 
> 
> I do have a patch but since it uses the unpack, loopback mount, add and
> then recompress style it is problematic as it requires root access and
> suffer from potential out of space conditions in the install image.
> 

Thanks for the report. Please file an upstream bug report against virtinst:

http://virt-manager.org/page/BugReporting

And please attach your patch to the bug report, since any working solution is
at least a starting point for an upstreamable patch.

Thanks,
Cole