[et-mgmt-tools] Re: strange virt-install/koan issue

Brenton Leanhardt bleanhar at redhat.com
Wed Jul 16 17:54:58 UTC 2008


+++ Brenton Leanhardt [16/07/08 11:13 -0400]:
> +++ Michael DeHaan [16/07/08 11:05 -0400]:
<snip>
>> Brenton Leanhardt wrote:
>>
>> Can you share your ~/.koan/*.log and also the versions of the associated 
>> packages?
>>
>> This can possibly help identify what koan should be doing with the 
>> virt-install APIs, but maybe isn't, in your case.
>>
>> --Michael
>
> koan-1.0.1-1.fc9.noarch
> kvm-65-7.fc9.i386
> python-virtinst-0.300.3-7.fc9.noarch
> kernel-2.6.25.10-86.fc9.i686
>
> I've attached the logs though I think I finally found something
> interesting.  
> I copied the temporay kernel, initrd, and xml used during the koan
> process.  I then made one modification to the xml, removing the
> "arch='i386'" attribute from the os type.  I noticed the xml created
> by the virt-install cli didn't have that so I took a shot in the dark.
> Seconds later I was actually able to run 'virsh start mydomain.xml'
> and have it work.  I suspect that if we can get koan to not set that
> attribute it will solve my problem.
<snip>

More interesting advancements in tracking down this issue:

1) Removing "arch='i386'" allows for kvm guests to be
provisioned
2) Changing "arch='i386'" to "arch='i686'" also allows kvm guests to
be provisioned on my hardware

After digging through all the libraries involved in the koan process I
couldn't determine a _good_ way to implement #1.  As for #2 I'm
starting to wonder if my problem isn't related to how 'cobbler import'
works.  'i686' is not a valid architecture for cobbler distros while both
'i386' and 'x86' are.  

Here's something interesting from koan/qcreate.py:

     if arch is not None and arch.lower() == "x86":
         arch = "i686"

Unfortuntely it seems like 'x86' is never returned from Cobbler for a
profile's arch, only 'i386', therefore the arch never get's set to
'i686' in my case.  As mentioned in #2, if "i686" could somehow be
set, I think koan would work for me. 

Questions:
1) Why does a kvm guest with a 'i386' arch not work on my hardware yet
'i686' does?
2) Should "cobbler import" import 'i386' distros as 'x86'?
3) Should cobblerd return 'x86' whenever the arch is 'x86' or 'i386'?




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