Open Stack

We've put together a simple proof of concept of driving native operating
system installers using Nova:

https://github.com/redhat-openstack/image-building-poc

The python CLI tool in this repo, when combined with the example install
scripts, can build both glance-backed and cinder-backed JEOS images for
the following operating systems entirely inside of Nova:

Fedora 17, 18
Ubuntu 10.04, 12.04, 12.10
RHEL 5.9, 6.4

These builds can be done using network install sources and, in some
limited cases, DVD/ISO install sources.  Full details can be found in
the README.md file on github.

Some background discussion about this approach from earlier this year
can be found here:

https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/NovaImageBuilding

The code is a bit rough around the edges but we believe the approach has
promise and can form the basis for a proper image building service
native to OpenStack.

I'd be grateful if anyone who's interested in the problem of image
building could have a look at this, give it a try and share
thoughts/feedback.

It's been developed against the packstack Folsom release but has had
some limited testing against devstack Grizzly installs.  Building glance
backed images may well be possible in earlier releases.

Some specific additional things I'd like to work on are:

* Expanding the collection of example kickstart/preseed files
* Adding the ability to pull kickstart/preseed files from libosinfo
* Adding support for installers beyond Ubuntu and Anaconda - I have
taken an early look at Yast but have yet to wrap my brain around the
bootstrap process.

-Ian