Re: EL6 initscript feedback.

[Gordan Bobic <gordan@bobich.net>]

 On Tue, 21 May 2013 21:30:27 +1000, Steven Haigh <netwiz@crc.id.au> 
 wrote:
> On 05/21/2013 09:20 PM, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
>> On Tue, 21 May 2013, Steven Haigh wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I'm throwing in my initscript here that I've been pushing to 
>>> autostart xen
>>> domains on system boot.
>>>
>>> There are at least one issue right now that I'm not 100% sure how 
>>> to handle -
>>> and that is domains created by libvirt. These continue to show in 
>>> an xm/xl
>>> list output even when they are not paused / running / blocked - 
>>> causing my
>>> initscript to think they are still running.
>>>
>>> The ways I can think of detecting this are *very* hacky and I 
>>> wouldn't feel
>>> comfortable to including them in widely used packages.
>>>
>>> I'm wondering if people have some spare time that they review the 
>>> logic in
>>> this initscript and provide feedback / suggestions / fixes / 
>>> improvements that
>>> I can roll into the scripts to enhance them for all.
>>
>> Is it actually a good idea to mix and match different toolstacks on 
>> the
>> same host? If somebody intends to use libvirt, surely she would want 
>> to
>> use it for everything?
>
> This is the interesting question... which probably leads into a more
> important question... What is the best practices for config 
> management
> and defining configuration for DomU's?
>
> While I recommend that people use a plain text config file in
> /etc/xen (although really the files can be just about anywhere) and
> then links to various auto-start DomU's in /etc/xen/auto as a general
> rule.
>
> Am I correct in thinking that libvirt only keeps details of domains
> in the xenstore? Is this recommended? Although more a libvirt 
> question
> - can libvirt be configured to use config files in /etc/xen or
> similar?

 I think this is largely distribution dependant. In the case of 
 EL/Fedora,
 libvirt seems to be the distro's intended way of managing VMs, at least 
 for
 their primary supported virtualization method (KVM).

 In the interest of clarity and maintainability I have seen the light
 and converted my VMs to simple text files in /etc/xen/ (there seems to 
 be
 no documentation on how to edit most of the settings in xenstore). Some
 consensus on the best way would be good, though.

 Gordan