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Nova has code to inject files into images before launching instances. The image is mapped either using nbd for qcow or loopback for raw, mounted and files copied in. Of course, this doesn't work with LVM based images like you might build using a simple Oz template. Enter stage left, libguestfs - this is a perfect use case for it. It'd be really cool for upstream to use libguestfs where available to handle many more image and OS types.
We should have a clearer libguestfs-on-Ubuntu-10.4 story before we launch into this further. At the moment I don't even know if it compiles on that platform, and I suspect the kernel will be too old (lacking support for virtio-serial). Investigating ...
(In reply to comment #1) > We should have a clearer libguestfs-on-Ubuntu-10.4 story before we launch into this further. Even without this, I'm sure upstream would take libguestfs if it was option - e.g. try it and fallback to loopback mounting, or even introduce the concept of a FileInjectionDriver and make a libguestfs based driver that can be enabled in nova.conf
Ubuntu 10.04: - qemu-kvm is really old (0.12.3) - kernel is also old (2.6.32) - febootstrap is collecting its pension (2.1!) - No hivex at all. hivex is not available until Ubuntu 11.04. - 'apt depends --recurse' is buggy so apt needs upgrading or the fix needs to be backported. (https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2011-August/msg00055.html) The apt update is where the real problems lie. A straight backport of the oneiric package is not feasible because it would pull other core dependencies. I need to isolate the fix and backport just that. So I think it'd be a lot of work to get libguestfs working in Ubuntu 10.04, and therefore it must be an optional dependency as you describe in comment 2. I also think this will limit acceptance upstream, and testing, because it looks like upstream have settled on Ubuntu 10.04.
(In reply to comment #3) > it looks like upstream have settled on Ubuntu 10.04. Upstream want to *support* Ubuntu 10.04 - and that's what the FileInjectionDriver based on the current code would be for. Doesn't exclude adding a libguestfs based implementation
Actually I got a bit further and managed to get libguestfs working: https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2011-September/msg00004.html The good news is that the workarounds required to install this aren't too bad. All that is really missing is an updated qemu-kvm, and we can easily supply that missing dependency or persuade Ubuntu that they really should think about backporting the newer qemu since it's generally [less] broken than the ancient version they are shipping.
It turns out that Grid Dynamics have a patch to do this: https://github.com/griddynamics/openstack-rhel/blob/master/SOURCES/openstack-nova-guestfs-image-injects.patch
The patch needs a little bit of work, but it's generally on the right track.
[Just some "notes to self" about this] Currently the code in nova/virt/disk.py implements a lot of things like resizing disks, injecting files etc which would be better done using libguestfs. https://github.com/openstack/nova/blob/93c02408754e7cec274c6d2580bc04f5e333eade/nova/virt/disk.py We should make an abstract interface for the class (same as driver.ComputeDriver which abstracts libvirt, XenAPI etc) and then have implementations for the current impl and for libguestfs.
Pádraig's made great progress on this: https://review.openstack.org/1994
openstack-nova-2011.3-14.fc16 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 16. https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/openstack-nova-2011.3-14.fc16
Package openstack-nova-2011.3-14.fc16: * should fix your issue, * was pushed to the Fedora 16 testing repository, * should be available at your local mirror within two days. Update it with: # su -c 'yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing openstack-nova-2011.3-14.fc16' as soon as you are able to. Please go to the following url: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2011-17568/openstack-nova-2011.3-14.fc16 then log in and leave karma (feedback).
openstack-nova-2011.3-14.fc16 has been pushed to the Fedora 16 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.