[et-mgmt-tools] [PATCH] virt-install cli options for managed storage

Cole Robinson crobinso at redhat.com
Tue Aug 12 21:06:38 UTC 2008


Per Dan's advice, I've changed the previously proposed
virt-install cli options for specifying libvirt managed
storage.

This patch does not change any possible semantics of
--file or --cdrom: they remain strictly for specifying
local media. In this way they are basically deprecated.

A new cli option is added: --disk. The format is:

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

The changes from Dan's proposal are:

 - use of path:/// instead of file:///, since this will
   hopefully clear up any confusion users previously had
   with specifying block devices.
 - For vol:///, I used / as a delimiter vs. ':' between
   the pool and vol name, to avoid any extra collisions
   (since I assume '/' is not part of a legal pool name).
 - Explictly list what type of extra option we are
   appending (device, permissions). This adds clarity
   to the command line, reduces chance of name collision,
   and is similar to the approach used by qemu.

The --disk option is quite useful even for the local case,
since users can now add cdrom and floppy drives (and eventually
other device types) via the cli. This could also be expanded
to allow specifying file formats (qcow2, etc.) for creating
new storage.

The other functionality change is that disk:/// can be used
to specify install media. If none of --pxe, --cdrom, or 
--location are specified, we look to see if a --disk 
device=cdrom was specified, and if so, use that for
installation. We can eventually expand this to allow
installing off floppies.

One question: Is ':' an appropriate delimiter? qemu typically
uses ',' for these types of cli options. May be an arbitrary
choice, but perhaps someone has an opinion.

There are some small changes in the patch to allow installers
to skip setting up an install cdrom if no 'location' is
specified, and just defering to the guests disks. The rest
of the change is centered in virt-install.

 virt-install                |  174 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----------
 virtinst/DistroManager.py   |    6 +
 virtinst/LiveCDInstaller.py |   16 ++--
 3 files changed, 150 insertions(+), 46 deletions(-)

Thanks,
Cole

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