Open Stack

On Oct 2, 2016, at 2:00 AM, Amrith Kumar wrote:

> I recall from our conversation that you didn't "trust all these *stack builders".
> If you are now using a system that is devstack based these images could help.

I still don't do that, it's all hand crafted from scratch. Well, almost -
I still use packages (which do _A LOT_ of the .. 'boring, simple' setup
for me) but that'll change next time. Next time I'm doing it from source
(because I'm embarrassed by the quality of the packages - I did a small
upgrade a few months ago and absolutly everything broke, I had to completely
reinstall the controller)!

That's the only way _I_ can learn! Others might be different and I respect
that, but _I_ need to do this from scratch ("the hard way" if you like) to
be able to gain anything from this - the point wasn't just to "get a test
setup of Openstack up and running" or "setup a test so I can look at it"
but actually setting up a production-like system and to be able to
administrate it and especially fix problems if (when!) they arise! AND to
gain knowledge on how all this works together.


It's been the worst few months in my life (and it's been a long life :)
with almost 24/7 work on getting this in the state it is now, but now that
almost everything works the way I want it, I feel a great satisfaction and
my knowledge of "The Cloud (™)" have been greatly improved and I almost feel
I can put "Cloud Expert Extraordinair" on the CV :D :D.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone 'green', but anyone that's already bald
(there's going to be a lot of 'hair tearing' and 'head scratching' :) and
those that have a 'bigger purpose' than the immediate setup, oh yeah!

> [1] http://docs.openstack.org/developer/trove/dev/building_guest_images.html

Tried that for over a week. Failed so miserably, it's embarrassing!
Don't know if it's me, the docs or the image builder..

But I do remember that even if (when!) I followed the documentations _to the
letter_, it still failed.

Also, some versions of the image builder worked better than others (but I could
not figure out the exact version used by the documenter), so it would be
beneficial to specify the exact versions used when writing the documentation.


And have someone that never done it before do a run-through first - I know
from personal experience that you get .. 'code blind' (for lack of a better
word) when you've worked with a project and try to write the docs - some things
you know 'subconsciously' don't work (or work only in a specific use-case etc)
and then 'automatically' leave that information out..

That is why [good] companies _NEVER_ (ever!!) allow the coders/admins to go
any where _near_ the documentation! In a open source community, that is
unfortunately almost never an option, but it can be mitigated somewhat by
having other people in the community do a run-through.

> [2] http://docs.openstack.org/developer/trove/dev/guest_cloud_init.html

I can vaguely remember that. I know it failed, but can't remember the details.

> [3] https://review.openstack.org/#/c/374952/

That look quite interesting, thanx. I'll try again..

"If you don't succeed, try and try [and try and try ..] again!" :)

> OpenStack has guest images suitable for use with devstack[4] 
> [4] http://tarballs.openstack.org/trove/images/

What does that actually mean? Is it not possible to use these images other
than with devstack? An instance image should be a unique, separate instance
right?