Javier Guerra wrote:
On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 8:06 AM, Richard W.M. Jones <rjones@redhat.com> wrote:
I think the message here is, install libvirt & be happy :-)
nice as this tool sounds, i would need far more than this to make me switch from a simple, easily scriptable command-line to a generic, 'lowest common', solution like libvirt.
of course, i hope it keeps getting better. who knows? maybe in a year or so it would be comparable to the CLI.
Regrettably I agree for the moment. I ended up writing a Perl management script for my KVM VMs because libvirt was just too muddled and limited for my needs, and because the config file format confused me, didn't handle everything I needed, and I didn't find clear documentation on it. Also, I wanted to import existing guests from another VM, and libvirt's tools seemed strongly geared around creating new VMs to use with libvirt. So I had to write config files for it - see above. I like the idea of libvirt a lot and wish it well. My own Perl script was a nightmare to write even though it's not so long (synchronisation & monitor issues especially), so I respect what's done. It's a good goal. But I just found it too confusing to use in the ways I needed to use KVM, that I gave up on libvirt for now rather than spend the considerable time to get to grips with what it's doing, and it's config format. What would be nicer is a VM management protocol build in to QEMU, KVM and XEN, which is a bit like the monitor, but supports multiple client connections and overlapping operations (where reasonable), and is a bit more structured, so e.g. you can get the state of anything whose state you can set, you can wait for events, etc. The somewhat object-based config file work that's been discussed not long ago would be a good thing to structure it around. -- Jamie