[et-mgmt-tools] [PATCH 6/6] update virt-install options for specifying managed storage

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 12:26:48PM -0400, Cole Robinson wrote:
> The attached patch updates virt-install to allow specifying
> libvirt managed storage.
> 
> --file can specified managed storage using:
> 
> - An absolute path to a managed volume
> - A volume passed as --file volume:poolname:volname
> - A pool to create storage on, using --file pool:poolname
> 
> --cdrom can use the first of the above two options (doesn't
> make sense to create install media).
> 
> There is an obvious problem with this approach though:
> Specifying pool:foo or volume:foo:bar could collide
> with existing file names, and volume:foo:bar would
> fail if the specified pool had a colon in it. This
> was mostly my quick solution so I could test it all
> out, i'm open to suggestions how to change it. Once an
> interface is decided on I'll update the docs.

The other option would be to leave --file & --cdrom as they
already are, and instead use a more sensibly named  option
like --disk. People are often confused thinging that can't
pass a block device to --file already.  


The --cdrom arg also allows specifying a URI, in which case it
downloads the ISO image from the install tree for booting. 

So  I'd suggest using URI syntax

   --disk  file:///some/file/path[:cdrom|floppy][:ro|sh]
   --disk  vol:///poolname:volname[:cdrom|floppy][:ro|sh]
   --disk  pool:///poolname[:cdrom|floppy][:ro|sh]

So this defaults to creating a harddisk, writable, but lets you annotate
the arg to specify that its a cdrom, or floppy, and optionally readonly
or read-write shared.  In the future I expect we'll have more disk types
like Flash, or USB massstorage, etc, so better to have a single --disk
arg, than adding --floppy --usbmsd, --flash etc.


Daniel
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