[Openstack] boot from ISO

Donal Lafferty donal.lafferty at citrix.com
Fri Dec 2 10:44:21 UTC 2011


The background is that having provided a sample implementation, developers targeting libvirt would offer the same functionality.

DL

From: Michaël Van de Borne [mailto:michael.vandeborne at cetic.be]
Sent: 01 December 2011 16:34
To: Anne Gentle
Cc: Donal Lafferty; openstack at lists.launchpad.net
Subject: Re: [Openstack] boot from ISO

That's right, it's a XenServer only feature. I insist on XenServer because it's been implemented only inside the xenapi.
If you wish to manage VMs using KVM or Xen hypervisor (the community hypervisor packaged in Linux distributions), this will utilize the libvirt API, and not XenAPI.

So, one needs to use XenServer (btw, openstack works great with XenServer 6.0 even if documentation claims that the supported release is 5.5<http://docs.openstack.org/diablo/openstack-compute/admin/content/hypervisors.html>) in order for the XenAPI to be used.

I made use of this documentation<http://wiki.openstack.org/XenServerDevelopment> in order to set up the environement. What is missing is that, in order to activate the "Boot From ISO<http://wiki.openstack.org/bootFromISO>" feature, the SR elements on XenServer host must be configured that way:

1. create an ISO-typed SR, such as an NFS ISO library, for instance. For this, using XenCenter is pretty easy. You need to export an NFS volume from a remote NFS server. Make sure it is exported in RW mode.
2. on the host, find the uuid of this ISO SR:
# xe host-list
write the uuid down
3. # xe sr-list content-type=iso
locate the uuid of the NFS ISO library
4. # xe sr-param-set uuid=<iso sr uuid> other-config:i18n-key=local-storage-iso
Even if an NFS mount point isn't local storage, you must specify "local-storage-iso".
5. # xe pbd-list sr-uuid=<iso sr uuid>
make sure the host-uuid from "xe pbd-list" equals the uuid of the host you found at step 2

then apply the rest of the tutorial<http://wiki.openstack.org/XenServerDevelopment#Configure_SR_storage> and publish an ISO image this way:
glance add name=fedora_iso disk_format=iso container_format=bare  < Fedora-16-x86_64-netinst.iso
nova boot test_iso --flavor <flavor ID> --image <image ID>

I've posted this in the bug you filed, Anne.

By the way, I'm going to work on porting this feature on libvirt API and VMWare API (if nobody works on it yet).

Is the config drive yet available for Diablo??

cheers,

michaël



Michaël Van de Borne

R&D Engineer, SOA team, CETIC

Phone: +32 (0)71 49 07 45 Mobile: +32 (0)472 69 57 16, Skype: mikemowgli

www.cetic.be<http://www.cetic.be>, rue des Frères Wright, 29/3, B-6041 Charleroi

Le 01/12/11 16:29, Anne Gentle a écrit :

Thanks for the info! I've logged bug 898682 [1] to ensure it gets

added to the documentation. Based on this note, is this a solution for

Xen only?



Is this the same as using a config drive? I had heard a config drive

works on KVM but not Xen.



 If someone who's familiar with this area could work on the docs that

would be great.



Thanks,

Anne



[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/openstack-manuals/+bug/898682



On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 9:14 AM, Michaël Van de Borne

<michael.vandeborne at cetic.be><mailto:michael.vandeborne at cetic.be> wrote:

It finally works. The problem was the flag checks while looking for the ISO

SR.



inside the find_iso_sr method (in nova/virt/xenapi/vm_utils.py), I found

that the ISO SR must have these settings:

content type: iso

other-config:i18n-key=local-storage-iso



As far as I know, this wasn't documented anywhere. Hope this can be useful

for people from the future.



cheers,





michaël





Michaël Van de Borne

R&D Engineer, SOA team, CETIC

Phone: +32 (0)71 49 07 45 Mobile: +32 (0)472 69 57 16, Skype: mikemowgli

www.cetic.be<http://www.cetic.be>, rue des Frères Wright, 29/3, B-6041 Charleroi





Le 29/11/11 23:10, Donal Lafferty a écrit :



Off the top of my head, I'd look to see if the compute node can see that ISO

SR.







DL











From: Michaël Van de Borne [mailto:michael.vandeborne at cetic.be]

Sent: 29 November 2011 18:15

To: Donal Lafferty; openstack at lists.launchpad.net<mailto:openstack at lists.launchpad.net>

Subject: Re: [Openstack] boot from ISO







Hi Donal, hi all,



I'm trying to test the Boot From ISO feature. So I've set a XenServer host

and installed a Ubuntu 11.10 PV DomU in it.



Then I used the following commands but, as you can see in the attached

nova-compute log excerpt, there was a problem.



glance add name=fedora_iso disk_format=iso <

../Fedora-16-x86_64-Live-LXDE.iso

ID: 4

nova boot test_iso --flavor 2 --image 4



I can see the ISO images using "nova list" but not using "glance index".



The error seems to be: 'Cannot find SR of content-type ISO'. However, I've

set a NFS ISO Library using XenCenter, so that there is an actual ISO

content-typed SR. How to tell OpenStack to use this SR for the ISO images I

post using glance?



Any clue? I feel I'm rather close to make it work.





thanks,



michaël







Michaël Van de Borne



R&D Engineer, SOA team, CETIC



Phone: +32 (0)71 49 07 45 Mobile: +32 (0)472 69 57 16, Skype: mikemowgli



www.cetic.be<http://www.cetic.be>, rue des Frères Wright, 29/3, B-6041 Charleroi





Le 22/11/11 00:18, Donal Lafferty a écrit :



Hi Michaël,







"Boot from ISO" should be ISO image agnostic.  The feature overcomes

restrictions placed on the  distribution of modified Windows' images.

People can use their ISO instead, but they may still need to use dedicated

hardware.







You should have no problem with a Linux distribution.







However, I wrote it for XenAPI, so we need someone to duplicate the work for

KVM and VMWare.







DL











From: openstack-bounces+donal.lafferty=citrix.com at lists.launchpad.net<mailto:openstack-bounces+donal.lafferty=citrix.com at lists.launchpad.net>

[mailto:openstack-bounces+donal.lafferty=citrix.com at lists.launchpad.net] On

Behalf Of Michaël Van de Borne

Sent: 21 November 2011 17:28

To: openstack at lists.launchpad.net<mailto:openstack at lists.launchpad.net>

Subject: Re: [Openstack] boot from ISO







up? anybody?





Le 14/11/11 14:44, Michaël Van de Borne a écrit :



Hi all,



I'm very interested in the "Boot From ISO" feature described here:

http://wiki.openstack.org/bootFromISO



In a few words, it's about the ability to boot a VM from the CDROM with an

ISO image attached. A blank hard disk being attached to install the OS files

in it.



I've got some questions about this:

1. Is the feature available today using a standard Diablo install? I've seen

the code about this feature is stored under nova/tests and glance/tests.

Does this mean it isn't finished yet and could only be tested under specific

conditions? Which ones?

2. the spec tells about a Windows use case. Why just Windows? What should I

do to test with a Linux distribution?

3. I can see here that the Xen hypervisor only has been impacted by the

source code changes. Are KVM and VMWare planned to be supported in the

future? May I help/be helped to develop KVM and VMWare support for this

'Boot From Iso' feature?



Any help appreaciated



thank you,





michaël









--



Michaël Van de Borne



R&D Engineer, SOA team, CETIC



Phone: +32 (0)71 49 07 45 Mobile: +32 (0)472 69 57 16, Skype: mikemowgli



www.cetic.be<http://www.cetic.be>, rue des Frères Wright, 29/3, B-6041 Charleroi











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