Libguestfs - Feb 2014 - Openstack, libguestfs, Ubuntu 12.04 (precise)

Clark, thanks for the report about Openstack + the testing you did.

As my IRC proxy died (quite literally) today it's easier for me to
continue this on email.  I have CC'd this email to the libguestfs
mailing list, which does not require subscription, however the first
time you send an email it will require me to manually approve the
message.

I would suggest to debug this further, the best thing is to run the
following command on the Ubuntu host, capturing all the output.

  libguestfs-test-tool

Nova runs libguestfs as root (which is a bad thing, we prefer never to
run anything as root).  So you could try it both as root and as a
non-root ordinary user.

Another test would be actual file injection:

  guestfish -i -a somedisk.img
  ><fs> edit /some/file

Use -v -x to get a lot of extra debugging from guestfish.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-p2v converts physical machines to virtual machines.  Boot with a
live CD or over the network (PXE) and turn machines into KVM guests.
http://libguestfs.org/virt-v2v

On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 12:51 PM, Richard W.M. Jones <rjones@redhat.com>
wrote:
>
> Clark, thanks for the report about Openstack + the testing you did.
>
> As my IRC proxy died (quite literally) today it's easier for me to
> continue this on email.  I have CC'd this email to the libguestfs
> mailing list, which does not require subscription, however the first
> time you send an email it will require me to manually approve the
> message.
>
> I would suggest to debug this further, the best thing is to run the
> following command on the Ubuntu host, capturing all the output.
>
>   libguestfs-test-tool
>
> Nova runs libguestfs as root (which is a bad thing, we prefer never to
> run anything as root).  So you could try it both as root and as a
> non-root ordinary user.
>
> Another test would be actual file injection:
>
>   guestfish -i -a somedisk.img
>   ><fs> edit /some/file
>
> Use -v -x to get a lot of extra debugging from guestfish.
>
> Rich.
>
> --
> Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat
http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
> virt-p2v converts physical machines to virtual machines.  Boot with a
> live CD or over the network (PXE) and turn machines into KVM guests.
> http://libguestfs.org/virt-v2v
Not sure how much of this you caught in IRC so adding it here as well.
I haven't done much specific debugging of libguestfs with OpenStack. I
just know that OpenStack as deployed by devstack
(https://review.openstack.org/#/c/70546/ specifically tests the
recommended libguestfs install but it didn't work without that change
either) would fail tempest testing when using libguestfs. The bug
could be anywhere in the stack. I have unabandoned that change so that
we can do more debugging with it. Feel free to push new patches to it
that run the libguest-test-tool as suggested. I hope to eventually get
to it but am busy with other things this week and possibly next as
OpenStack is going through feature freeze. Hope this helps and I will
do my best to get the info you need.

Clark