Re: [libvirt] virt-install and custom distros
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