virt-install: changing default --os-variant behavior

[Cole Robinson]

On 9/20/20 4:46 PM, Peter Crowther wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Sep 2020 at 21:10, Cole Robinson <crobinso at redhat.com
> <mailto:crobinso at redhat.com>> wrote:
> [...]
> 
>     2) Default to --os-variant detect=on,name=<virtio-something>. 'give me
>     virtio' is representative of what most virt-install users want. But this
>     adds some new corner cases, ex if anyone is using virt-install with
>     windows up until now they could get away without specifying a
>     --os-variant and things would generally work, but now if we default to
>     virtio windows out of the box is not going to install. I kinda doubt
>     many people are using virt-install with windows though.
> 
> 
> As feedback, this is the single largest use case in the main
> virtualisation cluster I manage.  CentOS hosts, 90% Windows 7(!) and 8.1
> guests.  We have our virt-install scripted to add a floppy drive with
> autoinstall file, virtio drivers, and a few other bits and pieces like a
> minimal puppet client install (surprisingly non-trivial in Windows 7
> gold), so we could live with such a change; but please don't assume that
> if the hosts are Linux then the guests are also likely to be Linux.
> 

Thanks for the info. I don't expect we will go this route.

But presumably you are already specifying an --os-variant though? In
which case you would be fine even if the default changes.

If you aren't using --os-variant there's a chance that media OS
detection could fail (if you started using a new/updated windows ISO
that osinfo-db doesn't detect correctly) and then virt-install would
start generating different configurations on you.

- Cole