[fedora-virt] Fedora virtualization -- comments and questions

[Robert L Cochran]

Well I'm a bit confused because it is hard for me to see the connection 
you are making to ease of virtualization here. I think you must be 
asking a question equivalent to this one:

"Is it possible to move Fedora virtual machines from one system to 
another system despite my complicated LVM disk setup?"

Not being an expert, I don't know the answer, but it should (eventually) 
be possible for you to move virtual machines from disk to disk. I wonder 
if you can copy a Fedora virtual machine to a Windows system and then 
run it in VMWare player. I've seen that done for Ubuntu.

Bob


On 06/25/2009 12:11 PM, Gene Czarcinski wrote:
> On Thursday 25 June 2009 10:28:50 Gerry Maddock wrote:
>    
>>   From: Gene Czarcinski<gene at czarc.net>
>>
>>      
>>> I am a newcomer to Fedora (linux) virtualization.  However, I have
>>> been a long
>>> time user of VMware products running first on Red Hat Linux and then on
>>>        
>> Fedora.
>>
>>      
>>> When I recently acquired a CPU with hardware virtualization support (AMD
>>> Phenom II 940), I decided to "change my problem set" and give Fedora
>>> Virtualization a try ... specifically qemu/kvm/etc.
>>>
>>> I use virtuals for three purposes: 1) To test software which might
>>>        
>> destroy a
>>
>>      
>>> system or testing which requires a lot of re-booting.  2) For development
>>>
>>> environment to build rpm packages for various systems, i386/x86_64, etc.
>>>        
>> 3)
>>
>>      
>>> To run windows.
>>>
>>> OK, install the virtualization packages and then install a simple Fedora
>>>        
>> 11
>>
>>      
>>> guest ... naturally it worked fine.
>>>
>>> Now lets get down to real business since I would be installing/running a
>>> number of virtual systems.  The first thing I found was that
>>> configuration files,
>>> disk images, etc. were scattered but mostly under /etc/libvirt and
>>> /var/lib/libvirt.  I looked for a runtime parameter which specified where
>>>
>>> things were to be stored but did not find anything.  Furthermore, all of
>>>        
>> this
>>
>>      
>>> stuff was in the root ("/") partition and, when I upgraded to the
>>> next release,
>>> a pain to bring across.
>>>
>>> I have three suggestions (I will put these in bugzilla as soon as
>>> someone says
>>> what package they should be filed against):
>>>
>>> 1. Put all files (disk images, configuration, etc.) under a single
>>>        
>> directory
>>
>>      
>>> (easier to manage).
>>>
>>> 2. Provide a virtualization configuration parameter for setting the top
>>> directory to be used to store virtualization files (make it easier to get
>>>
>>> things out of root).
>>>
>>> 3. Do not require DVD/CD ISO images to be in the image directory and do
>>>        
>> not
>>
>>      
>>> screw with SELinux settings on ISO files.
>>>
>>> For those unfamiliar with it, this is more or less how VMware stuff
>>> sets things
>>> up.
>>>
>>> So much for wishful thinking, how do I make things easier (and get the
>>>        
>> files
>>
>>      
>>> out of root)?
>>>
>>> OK, what I have come up with is to create a separate partition for all of
>>>        
>> the
>>
>>      
>>> files and then "bind mount" it to /var/lib/libvirt and /etc/libvirt.
>>>
>>> Does this make sense?  Is this going to work? Any other suggestions?
>>>        
>> I have been using qemu-kvm pretty much since it was 1st released. All of my
>> images have always defaulted to /var/lib/libvirt/images/ and have never
>> been "scattered" or anywhere else such as /root. As far as I know CD/DVD
>> ISO images could be stored where ever you wanted them (mine never default
>> to /var/lib/libvirt/). Not sure by what you mean by: "and do not screw with
>> SELinux settings on ISO files".
>>      
>
> OK, to properly state my "problem", I need to supply some additional info.
>
> 1.  All of my Fedora systems are multiboot systems with a small (minimal
> install) Fedora as a "boot selector" and system to define striped LVM logical
> volumes (which anaconda does not support).  Each system has at least two disk
> drives (they are pretty cheap these days).  There are multiple swap and /boot
> partitions defined.  The remainder of the disk space is put into a single LVM
> volume group.
>
> 2.  Basic rule: "do not screw with a working system!" ... Only do fresh
> installs.  NEVER upgrade.  This was a hard lesson to learn but it keeps me out
> of trouble,.
>
> 3. Each system has four /boot partitions and four "/" logical volumes (named
> root1-4) ... think of these as old, current, next, and testing.  /home and
> other data are put into separate logical volumes.  One of these separate
> logical volumes has been used for VMware Virtuals.  I keep what goes into a
> "/" (commonly referred to as "root" in Unix/Linux) to just software, etc. for
> a specific version of a system (e.g., Fedora 10, Fedora 11, Fedora 12, etc).  I
> expect all other stuff to be in separate partitions or LVM logical volumes
> which I can mount on my new system.
>
> 4.  After installing a "new" system such as when Fedora 12 is released, I want
> to do a minimum of work copying over stuff from the old system to the new
> system.
>
> 5.  With the current "libvirt" setup I have disk images under
> /var/lib/libvert/images and the guest's configuration under /etc/libvirt/qemu.
> Furthermore, I now have an application which can chew up a lot of disk space
> and all of it coming out of the "/" logical volume.  I currently size my "/"
> logical volumes to handle a lot of software plus a good amount of temporary
> storage ... BUT I do not have 150GB "/" partitions/logical-volumes!
>
> 5.  My current VMware virtuals take about 100GB of storage and I expect Fedora
> Virtualization to need similar resources.  It does not make any sense to me to
> duplicate the storage for each version of the operating system I have
> installed.
>
> Now, will mount-bind work?  Does anyone have a better suggestion?  Leaving it
> as-is is not an option.
>
> As far as SELinux goes, I read (somewhere in documentation) that a) iso images
> had to be under /var/lib/libvirt/images and that b) the SELinux context values
> would be set to "virt_image_t".  This may not be the way the software actual
> works but this is what is described in some related documentation.
>
> Gene
>
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