FWN/Beats/Virtualization

Virtualization

In this section, we cover discussion of Fedora virtualization technologies on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list, @fedora-xen-list, and @libvirt-list lists.

Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley

Enterprise Management Tools List

This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list

Fedora Virtualization List

This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-virt list.

New Release libguestfs 1.0.41

Richard Jones announced "version 1.0.41 of libguestfs, the library for accessing and modifying virtual machine filesystems."

New Features:

• squashfs and cramfs support
• better support for read-only access to drives
• many problems with string handling in different language bindings have been fixed
• internationalization support
• ext4 support improved on RHEL 5
• improved support for running commands in the guest
• support for skipping tests
• lvresize and ext2/3 resize support
• pvremove, vgremove, lvremove commands
• sleep command
• IRC channel #libguestfs on FreeNode

See previous release announcement for 1.0.15 in FWN#174 .

New virt-inspector Features

Richard Jones announced

"I've added a few extra features to virt-inspector (in libguestfs >= 1.0.42)."

"First up is a new 'query mode'" which prints "out some useful facts about the virtual machine such as whether it's fully virtualized or needs a Xen hypervisor, and whether it has various paravirt drivers installed."

"Secondly (not covered in the manpage), virt-inspector will try to discover whether a VM contains the right initrd drivers and module configuration to boot under various hypervisors. So for example it can tell you whether a guest has the virtio drivers available at boot time to boot from a virtio disk."

Fedora Virtualization Status

Mark McLoughlin looked on to Fedora 12 in his latest virtualization status report. "Okay, so F-11 is done and dusted. Onwards to F-12!" "Here's what the schedule looks like:"

2009-07-28 Feature Freeze (53 days)

2009-08-04 Beta Freeze (60 days)

2009-09-22 Final Development Freeze (109 days)

2009-10-20 Compose & Stage Release Candidate (137 days)

Highlights of the report included:

• A thorough run-down of virtualization related bugs.
• "Dan Berrange was interviewed about virtualization in Fedora 11."
• "Updates are being pushed regularily to the virt-preview repository"
• "Jeremy Fitzhardinge's latest submission of the Xen Dom0 patches for

2.6.31 has caused the kernel community to get themselves into a bit of a flap. LWN has a nice article on the 'discussion'"

Gerd Hoffmann followed up with some details on the controversial bits. "lapic + ioapic. That is the big hot topic. Current code lacks sensible interfaces to the different apic types out there in the wild. The current dom0 patches hook just into that mess instead of cleaning it up. Right now it looks like Jeremy has to sort that mess to get the xen bits in, using the to-be-created apic interfaces."

"No way the apic stuff will make it into the 2.6.31 merge window opening RSN, the work on that barely started. Thus we can expect functional dom0 support upstream in 2.6.32 earliest."

"Also noteworthy: There is a discussion on xen-devel regarding the future of the xen linux trees. Which one should be used & maintained and so on." "Looks like Keir seriously considers switching xen-unstable to the pv_ops kernel by default. YES! FINALLY! Well, it is probably to early to uncork the champagne, but I think we can at least put a bottle into the fridge ;)"

Fedora Xen List

This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list.

Libvirt List

This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list.