August 2006 - Devel - libvirt List Archives

[Libvir] RFC: A more convenient 'virsh create' command
by Daniel P. Berrange 25 Aug '06

25 Aug '06

The current implementation of 'virsh create' takes an XML file as its only parameter & creates a domain from this. This is great if you have a suitable XML file already, but if you are just trying to automate some simple tasks from the shell then the need to use XML is a little cumbersome. Thus I was thinking perhaps we could have an alternate way to define a new VM (keep the current XML based way too of course) QEMU for example makes it very easy to launch a new VM: qemu -m 256 -hda /path/to/image.dsk -hdc /path/to/boot.iso Taking inspiration from this syntax we could allow: virsh start -m 256 -hda /path/to/image.dsk -hdc /path/to/boot.iso -name Foo Internally, the 'start' command would simply transform these command line args into the neccessary libvirt XML and then call the normal create functions. Another way would be have a 'genxml' command, which accepted these list of devices / config properties & then printed out appropriate XMl. This could be piped to the regular 'virsh create' command virsh genxml -m 256 -hda /path/to/image.dsk -hdc /path/to/boot.iso \ -name Foo | virsh create - This isn't so critical for Xen, because people are already used to writing config files before creating the domain, but when we get a QEMU backend i think such a convenient method for defining new VMs will be neccessary to encourage users to use virsh instead of manually calling 'qemu'. Even for Xen users it would make shell script easier though :-) Regards, Dan. -- |=- Red Hat, Engineering, Emerging Technologies, Boston. +1 978 392 2496 -=| |=- Perl modules: http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/ -=| |=- Projects: http://freshmeat.net/~danielpb/ -=| |=- GnuPG: 7D3B9505 F3C9 553F A1DA 4AC2 5648 23C1 B3DF F742 7D3B 9505 -=|

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[Libvir] Allow default hypervisor URI to be set via ENV variable
by Daniel P. Berrange 25 Aug '06

25 Aug '06

When using a non-Xen backend with virsh, it gets pretty tedious always passing '--default test:///some/big/path' - particularly if you're never using Xen on that machine. Thus I figured it would be useful to allow the default Xen URI to be overridden via an environment variable. [berrange@localhost src]$ unset VIRSH_DEFAULT_CONNECT_URI [berrange@localhost src]$ ./virsh list failed to find libvirt_proxy libvir: error : no support for hypervisor lt-virsh: error: failed to connect to the hypervisor [berrange@localhost src]$ export VIRSH_DEFAULT_CONNECT_URI=test:///default [berrange@localhost src]$ ./virsh list Id Name State ---------------------------------- 0 Domain-0 running This will be even more useful when other real hypervisors are available for libvirt. The patch also removes the assumption in virsh that there is >= 1 guest domains - sure Xen always has a Domain-0, but its not guarenteed that other non-Xen HVs have a permanent Domain-0 Regards, Dan. -- |=- Red Hat, Engineering, Emerging Technologies, Boston. +1 978 392 2496 -=| |=- Perl modules: http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/ -=| |=- Projects: http://freshmeat.net/~danielpb/ -=| |=- GnuPG: 7D3B9505 F3C9 553F A1DA 4AC2 5648 23C1 B3DF F742 7D3B 9505 -=|

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[Libvir] New virt-manager release v0.2.0
by Daniel P. Berrange 25 Aug '06

25 Aug '06

I'm pleased to announce the availabilty of another snapshot / development release of virt-manager, version 0.2.0. The major new capabilities in this release include: * First cut of a wiziard for creating both paravirt & fullyvirt guest VMs. aka the gui equivalent of xenguest-install.py You can find out more about this in the new screenshots section: http://virt-manager.et.redhat.com/screenshots/install.html * An embedded serial console viewer - no need to go to the shell and use 'xm console' anymore. This is actually used for the paravirt guest instllation if your XenU kernel does not support the new VNC framebuffer (not yet in xen-unstable) * Hooked up the config dialog for adjusting vcpus & memory for active domains * Extended RFB protocol handler code to support the 'desktop resize' extensions in the VNC widget - so the graphical console has correct size when the guest switches screen resolutions The tar.gz for the release can be found on the download page: http://virt-manager.et.redhat.com/download.html NB, I'm not providing RPMs in my people.redhat.com YUM repo because we're intending to build this release straight into Fedora rawhide. I'll send a followup message when they're avaiable there. NB-2. there is a dependnacy on the 'xeninst' python library which is a new library built from re-factoring xenguest-install.py You can get this from rawhide in the python-xeninst RPM, or direct from the mercurial repository http://hg.et.redhat.com/virt/applications/xeninst--devel Regards, Dan. -- |=- Red Hat, Engineering, Emerging Technologies, Boston. +1 978 392 2496 -=| |=- Perl modules: http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/ -=| |=- Projects: http://freshmeat.net/~danielpb/ -=| |=- GnuPG: 7D3B9505 F3C9 553F A1DA 4AC2 5648 23C1 B3DF F742 7D3B 9505 -=|

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[Libvir] Adding test suite for sexpr<->xml conversions
by Daniel P. Berrange 24 Aug '06

24 Aug '06

Quite a critical bit of the libvirt code is that which converts between SEXPR and XML, and vica-verca. I've broken this code several times when making changes, so it is way overdue to get some unit test coverage in this area. The attached patch adds such coverage - defining two tests xml2sexprtest and sexpr2xmltest. The tests are pretty simple, in the tests/ directory I just have a bunch of xml & sexpr files - one is the fixed input, the other is the expected output. The test just runs the conversion and compares the actual output with the expected output. Currently I've added two example data files - one for paravirt & one for fully-virt. With this patch you can run tests: $ make check make check-TESTS make[1]: Entering directory `/home/berrange/src/xen/libvirt/tests' XML-2-SEXPR PV config ... OK XML-2-SEXPR FV config ... OK PASS: xml2sexprtest SEXPR-2-XML PV config ... OK SEXPR-2-XML FV config ... OK PASS: sexpr2xmltest ================== All 2 tests passed ================== make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/berrange/src/xen/libvirt/tests' I'm shortly about to start on updating the code to deal with new CDROM configuration format for HVM guests in Xen 3.0.3, and so intend to add further test files during this process (and of course make sure I don't break the existing ones :-) Regards, Dan. -- |=- Red Hat, Engineering, Emerging Technologies, Boston. +1 978 392 2496 -=| |=- Perl modules: http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/ -=| |=- Projects: http://freshmeat.net/~danielpb/ -=| |=- GnuPG: 7D3B9505 F3C9 553F A1DA 4AC2 5648 23C1 B3DF F742 7D3B 9505 -=|

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[Libvir] [Libvirt] Proposal to add 3 functions for VBDs (Virtual Block Devices)
by michel.ponceau＠bull.net 24 Aug '06

24 Aug '06

After the new VCPU functions, we also need Virtual Block Device management equivalent to Xen commands: 'xm block-list', 'xm block-attach', 'xm block-detach'. I propose to add in Libvirt the following 3 functions: /** * virDomainGetVbdevs: * @domain: pointer to domain object, or NULL for Domain0 * @info: pointer to an array of virVbdevInfo structures * @maxinfo: number of structures in info array * * Extract information about virtual block devices of domain, store it in info. * * Returns the number of info filled in case of success, -1 in case of failure. */ int virDomainGetVbdevs(virDomainPtr domain, virVbdevInfoPtr info, int maxinfo) /** * virDomainCreateVbdev: * @domain: pointer to domain object, or NULL for Domain0 * @number: virtual device number * @mode: read-only (VIR_VBDMD_RO), or read/write (VIR_VBDMD_RW) * @bkendID: ID of domain hosting the backend device (usually 0 for domain0) * @bkend: pointer to backend device path * * Create a virtual block device. * * Returns 0 in case of success, -1 in case of failure. */ int virDomainCreateVbdev(virDomainPtr domain, unsigned int number, int mode, int bkendID, char *bkend) /** * virDomainDestroyVbdev: * @domain: pointer to domain object, or NULL for Domain0 * @number: virtual device number * * Destroy a virtual block device. * * Returns 0 in case of success, -1 in case of failure. */ int virDomainDestroyVbdev(virDomainPtr domain, unsigned int number) Structure in libvirt.h: /** * virVbdevInfo: information structure for a Virtual Block Device in a domain */ typedef struct _virVbdevInfo virVbdevInfo; struct _virVbdevInfo { unsigned int number; /* virtual device number */ int state; int evtChn; int ringRef; int bkendID; /* ID of domain hosting the backend device */ char bkend[128]; }; typedef virVbdevInfo *virVbdevInfoPtr; /* Virtual Block Device access modes: read-only or read/write */ #define VIR_VBDMD_RO 0 #define VIR_VBDMD_RW 1

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Re: [Libvir] Semantics for ListDomains/ ListDefinedDomains
by Jim Fehlig 24 Aug '06

24 Aug '06

>>> Gareth S Bestor <bestor(a)us.ibm.com> 08/23/06 8:04 PM >>> > At the *very* worst, is there a way you can pipe an arbitrary xm config > file thru xm and have it spit out what it would have done, without actually > doing it? That could be a reliable fallback migration path perhaps. xm create /path/to/config --dryrun Spits out s-expr last time I checked. Jim

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[Libvir] Release of libvirt-0.1.4
by Daniel Veillard 16 Aug '06

16 Aug '06

Okay, there was a lot of new stuff which accumulated in the last month, it was urgent to push a new release. Available at ftp://libvirt.org/libvirt/ and http://libvirt.org/sources/ * bug fixes: - spec file fix (Mark McLoughlin) - error report problem (with Hugh Brock) - long integer in Python bindings (with Daniel Berrange) - XML generation bug for CDRom (Daniel Berrange) - bug when using number() XPath function (Mark McLoughlin) - fix python detection code - remove duplicate initialization errors (Daniel Berrange) * improvements: - UUID in XML description (Peter Vetere) - proxy code cleanup - virtual CPU and affinity support + virsh support (Michel Ponceau, Philippe Berthault, Daniel Berrange) - port and tty informations for console in XML (Daniel Berrange) - added XML dump to driver and proxy support (Daniel Berrange) - extention of boot options with support for floppy and cdrom (Daniel Berrange) - features block in XML to report/ask PAE, ACPI, APIC for HVM domains (Daniel Berrange) - fail side-effect operations when using read-only connection - large improvements to test driver (Daniel Berrange) * documentation: - spelling (Daniel Berrange) - test driver examples. Thanks to everybody who helped for this release ! Daniel -- Red Hat Virtualization group http://redhat.com/virtualization/ Daniel Veillard | virtualization library http://libvirt.org/ veillard(a)redhat.com | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/

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[Libvir] Re-factor sexpr_uuid method
by Daniel P. Berrange 16 Aug '06

16 Aug '06

The sexpr_uuid method is used to convert from the printable representation of a UUID into the binary format (unsigned char[16]). This patch refactors the main body of the method so that it is usable by other non-XenD driver backends for parsing UUIDs. This new re-factored method will be used by a patch I'll shortly submit for the test driver backend. Dan. -- |=- Red Hat, Engineering, Emerging Technologies, Boston. +1 978 392 2496 -=| |=- Perl modules: http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/ -=| |=- Projects: http://freshmeat.net/~danielpb/ -=| |=- GnuPG: 7D3B9505 F3C9 553F A1DA 4AC2 5648 23C1 B3DF F742 7D3B 9505 -=|

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[Libvir] Record an error when refusing a read-only operation
by Daniel P. Berrange 16 Aug '06

16 Aug '06

The libvirt.c front-end can be compiled in 'pedantic' mode in which case it explicitly refuses operations with side-effects in read-only connections. When doing so, however, it was not recording any error message so feedback to the user was misleading / obsure. This patch adds an extra error code VIR_ERR_READ_ONLY which is used when an operation is denied due to a read only connection. This patch also passes 'VIR_DRV_OPEN_QUIET' to the 'open' method so tell the XenD driver not complain if it fails to open a HV connection. This is because it was complaining whenever trying to open a test:///default connection. Dan. -- |=- Red Hat, Engineering, Emerging Technologies, Boston. +1 978 392 2496 -=| |=- Perl modules: http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/ -=| |=- Projects: http://freshmeat.net/~danielpb/ -=| |=- GnuPG: 7D3B9505 F3C9 553F A1DA 4AC2 5648 23C1 B3DF F742 7D3B 9505 -=|

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[Libvir] Major extensio of test backend driver functionality
by Daniel P. Berrange 16 Aug '06

16 Aug '06

Ok, here comes the huge patch for today - a major extension of the test driver backend... As well as the interal hardcoded 'test:///default' hypervisor config you can now provide a path to an arbitrary XML file defining your HV and its domains. An example file to define a moster 128x6GHz CPU box with 128 GB of RAM and two guest domains looks like: <node> <domain file="testdomfv0.xml"/> <domain file="testdomfc4.xml"/> <cpu> <mhz>6000</mhz> <model>i986</model> <active>50</active> <nodes>4</nodes> <sockets>4</sockets> <cores>4</cores> <threads>2</threads> </cpu> <memory>137438953472</memory> </node> The individual domains 'testdomfv0.xml' and 'testdomfc4.xml' are defined using the regular libvirt XML format. The only exception is that the 'type' attribute on the top level '<domain>' tag should be 'test' instead of 'xen' So for example: $ virsh --connect test:///home/berrange/src/xen/libvirt/docs/testnode.xml virsh > nodeinfo CPU model: i986 CPU(s): 50 CPU frequency: 6000 MHz CPU socket(s): 4 Core(s) per socket: 4 Thread(s) per core: 2 NUMA cell(s): 4 Memory size: 137438953472 kB virsh > list Id Name State ---------------------------------- 0 fv0 running 1 fc4 running virsh > dominfo fc4 Id: 1 Name: fc4 UUID: ef861801-45b9-11cb-88e3-afbfe5370493 OS Type: linux State: running CPU(s): 1 CPU time: 1155740835.5s Max memory: 131072 kB Used memory: 131072 kB virsh > Next up, I've written implementations of the set memory, set max memory, set vcpus, dump xml, create linux APIs for the test driver. THe only major areas of functionality lacking in the test driver now are handling of disk and network devices when creating domains, and the VCPU pinning methods. This test backend makes testing the virt-manager application much more reliable - although we still do need some level of testing against a real Xen backend (for example domain creation). Regards, Dan. -- |=- Red Hat, Engineering, Emerging Technologies, Boston. +1 978 392 2496 -=| |=- Perl modules: http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/ -=| |=- Projects: http://freshmeat.net/~danielpb/ -=| |=- GnuPG: 7D3B9505 F3C9 553F A1DA 4AC2 5648 23C1 B3DF F742 7D3B 9505 -=|

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