Create a minimal, automated Btrfs Fedora guest template with Oz

I needed to create an automated Btrfs guest for a test. A trivial virt-install based automated script couldn’t complete the guest install (on a Fedora Rawhide host) — it hung perpetually once it tries to retrieve .treeinfo, vmlinuz, initrd.img. On my cursory investigation with guestfish, I couldn’t pin-point the root cause. Filed a bug here

[Edit, 31JAN2014: The above is fixed by adding –console=pty to virt-install command-line; refer the above bug for discussion.]

In case someone wants to reproduce with versions I noted in the above bug:

  $ wget http://kashyapc.fedorapeople.org/virt/create-guest-qcow2-btrfs.bash
  $ chmod +x create-guest-qcow2-btrfs.bash
  $ ./create-guest-qcow2-btrfs.bash fed-btrfs2 f20

Oz
So, I resorted to Oz – a utility to create automated installs of various Linux distributions. I previously wrote about it here

Below I describe a way to use it to create a minimal, automated Btrfs Fedora 20 guest template.

Install it:

 $ yum install oz -y 

A minimal Kickstart file with Btrfs partitioning:

$ cat Fedora20-btrfs.auto
install
text
keyboard us
lang en_US.UTF-8
network --device eth0 --bootproto dhcp
rootpw fedora
firewall --enabled ssh
selinux --enforcing
timezone --utc America/New_York
bootloader --location=mbr --append="console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200"
zerombr
clearpart --all --drives=vda
autopart --type=btrfs
reboot

%packages
@core
%end

A TDL (Template Description Language) file that Oz needs as input:

$ cat f20.tdl
<template>
  <name>f20btrfs</name>
  <os>
    <name>Fedora</name>
    <version>20</version>
    <arch>x86_64</arch>
    <install type='url'>
      <url>http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/20/Fedora/x86_64/os/</url>
    </install>
    <rootpw>fedora</rootpw>
  </os>
  <description>Fedora 20</description>
</template>

Invoke oz-install (supply the Kickstart & TDL files, turn on debugging to level 4 — all details):

$ oz-install -a Fedora20-btrfs.auto -d 4 f20.tdl 
[. . .]
INFO:oz.Guest.FedoraGuest:Cleaning up after install
Libvirt XML was written to f20btrfsJan_29_2014-11:38:44

Define the above Libvirt guest XML, start it over a serial console:

$  virsh define f20btrfsJan_29_2014-11:38:44
Domain f20btrfs defined from f20btrfsJan_29_2014-11:38:44

$ virsh start f20btrfs --console
[. . .]
Connected to domain f20btrfs
Escape character is ^]

Fedora release 20 (Heisenbug)
Kernel 3.11.10-301.fc20.x86_64 on an x86_64 (ttyS0)

localhost login: 

It’s automated, fine, but still slightly more tedious (TDL file looks redundant at this point) to create custom guest image templates.

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Capturing x86 CPU diagnostics

Sometime ago I learnt, from Paolo Bonzini (upstream KVM maintainer), about this little debugging utility – x86info (written by Dave Jones) which captures detailed information about CPU diagnostics — TLB, cache sizes, CPU feature flags, model-specific registers, etc. Take a look at its man page for specifics.

Install:

 $  yum install x86info -y 

Run it and capture the output in a file:

 $  x86info -a 2>&1 | tee stdout-x86info.txt  

As part of debugging KVM-based nested virtualization issues, here I captured x86info of L0 (bare metal, Intel Haswell), L1 (guest hypervisor), L2 (nested guest, running on L1).

virt-builder, to trivially create various Linux distribution guest images

I frequently use virt-builder (part of libguestfs-tools package) as part of my work flow.

Rich has extensively documented it, still I felt it’s worth pointing out again of its sheer simplicity.

For instance, if you need to create a Fedora 20 guest of size 100G, and of qcow2 format, it’s as trivial as (no need for root login):

$ virt-builder fedora-20 --format qcow2 --size 100G
[   1.0] Downloading: http://libguestfs.org/download/builder/fedora-20.xz
#######################################################################  100.0%
[ 131.0] Planning how to build this image
[ 131.0] Uncompressing
[ 139.0] Resizing (using virt-resize) to expand the disk to 100.0G
[ 220.0] Opening the new disk
[ 225.0] Setting a random seed
[ 225.0] Setting random root password [did you mean to use --root-password?]
Setting random password of root to N4KkQjZTgdfjjqJJ
[ 225.0] Finishing off
Output: fedora-20.qcow2
Output size: 100.0G
Output format: qcow2
Total usable space: 97.7G
      Free space: 97.0G (99%)

Then, import the just created image:

$ virt-install --name guest-hyp --ram 8192 --vcpus=4 \
  --disk path=/home/test/vmimages/fedora-20.qcow2,format=qcow2,cache=none \
  --import

It provides a serial console for login.

You could also create several other distribution variants – Debian, etc