CentOS virt - Sep 2015 - FYI: Some changes to libguestfs / libguestfs-winsupport / virt-v2v / virt-p2v in RHEL 7.2

libguestfs is a set of tools for reading and modifying disk images and
virtual machines.  virt-v2v and virt-p2v are tools for converting
guests from foreign hypervisors (especially VMware, Xen), or physical
machines, to run on KVM (eg. virt-manager, OpenStack/RHOS or oVirt/RHEV).

This is just a heads-up about some changes to the way libguestfs and
related packages will be packaged in RHEL 7.2.

Previously (<= 7.1):

 - libguestfs required qemu-kvm-rhev (qemu-kvm-ev in CentOS).

 - libguestfs-winsupport was in a separate RHEL channel.

 - libguestfs-winsupport had file conflicts with ntfs-3g.

 - virt-v2v was not shipped in RHEL 7.1.

 - There were missing BuildRequires.

Starting with RHEL 7.2:

 - libguestfs requires qemu-kvm.  (You can still use qemu-kvm-ev if
   you want).

 - There is an upgraded qemu-kvm package that contains the extra
   features from qemu-kvm-ev that libguestfs needed.

 - libguestfs-winsupport will be shipped in the base RHEL Server channel,
   as an ordinary package.

 - libguestfs-winsupport won't conflict with any EPEL packages.

 - virt-v2v is built as a binary sub-package of libguestfs, and shipped
   in the base RHEL Server channel.

 - There should be no missing BuildRequires this time.

Hopefully this is a simplification, and will make everyone's job
easier.  If there's any fall-out from these changes that affects
CentOS, please let me know - best to CC me on any emails.

	- - -

Now for something that is -- unfortunately -- still complicated:

virt-p2v is a CD/ISO that we build to allow conversions of physical
machines to KVM.  You have to boot the physical machine with the CD.
For this reason the virt-p2v ISO that we give to RHEL customers
contains a bootable RHEL distro.

In RHEL we build this using an (IMHO over-complicated) method starting
with a kickstart, building an ISO, and then wrapping the ISO in an
RPM.  If CentOS has a way to ship ISOs, then it's likely better for
CentOS just to build the ISO and stop there.  To get the kickstart,
run:

  $ virt-p2v-make-kickstart -o p2v.ks http://centos.org/path/to/7.2/repo

Further instructions here:

  http://libguestfs.org/virt-p2v-make-kickstart.1.html

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
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