[et-mgmt-tools] Re: [libvirt] virt-install and custom distros

[Cole Robinson]

Kay Williams wrote:
> Can the issue be addressed in the upcoming virtinst release?
> 

Sure, I'll take a look at it by Monday.

Thanks,
Cole

> Cole Robinson wrote:
>> Kay Williams wrote:
>>> We have an application that builds custom distributions based on RHEL, CentOS or 
>>> Fedora.  We would like to install these over the network using virt-install, but 
>>> we've run into an issue with the distro check logic. Specifically, virt-install 
>>> fails unless it finds a string "Red Hat Enterprise Linux", "Fedora"  or "CentOS" 
>>> within the family field of the .treeinfo file.
>>>
>>> Our application currently sets the family field to the user-provided distro name 
>>> (see below).  We have avoided using the base distro name given trademark concerns.
>>>
>>>      [general]
>>>      family = <user provided value>
>>>      variant = <user provided value>
>>>
>>> We can get virt-install to pass the distro check by setting the family name to 
>>> one of the accepted values, e.g.
>>>
>>>      [general]
>>>      family = Fedora
>>>      variant = [user provided distro name]
>>>
>>> Is this the expected/desired use for the family and variant fields?  Or is there 
>>> another approach we should consider?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Kay
>> (cc-ing et-mgmt-tools, since that is the list for virt-install/
>>  virt-manager)
>>
>> We shouldn't be failing if the family/variant is unknown: it's really
>> just a convenience check. We can just assume it's an unknown distro
>> and continue on, checking for [images-xen] and so on.. The code may
>> need to be reworked a bit to accomodate this.
>>
>> Although we don't do it at the moment, I could see us in the future
>> using this family/variant value to check our internal db on whether
>> to set up virtio and other specific settings. So using custom values
>> here may not allow virt-install to choose an optimal config, but we
>> should still try and let the install proceed.
>>
>> - Cole
>>
>>