Generate a CD-ROM with the packages inside for every release

[FlorianHeigl]

Hi @vholer I would sponsor at least part of this development. If that helps.

[vholer]

Hi Florian, please can you more describe your use case? Release just ISO containing all the packages of particular release shouldn't be much problem, but still the packages have dependencies on the distribution packages, and I don't see much chance in mirroring them into the ISO so that the distribution of the packages is self-contained, installable without the network connection. Thanks.

[FlorianHeigl]

Hi Vlastimil,

the use case summarized: any imported image, any base OS install from a CD does not have working networking unless one uses a MAC-based network. But for prod use people will normally want to have 'normal' IP-based networks. OpenNebula reserves the IP, and attaches a context ISO. The context ISO is not usable without the packages, and so users have to go through a extremely bad experience, and possibly they have to do so multiple times as their rescue attempts fail. The goal is to cut this short by including the most critical piece on the ISO. Only if we do this they can shovel their way out only using a VM console. Otherwise they have to "ah DAMN" start trying to make/attach ISOs themselves, or manually set up the networking. It's enough to make them run.

I think we should first just try to have the packages on the ISO, document that and see if it helps already. Based on the result, one can work on the additional options later.

Some fine print:

yeah it would be problematic to leave the package manager in an incomplete state. besides that though, keep in mind that the default state (no networking) is worse than any possible outcome of attempting to get networking.

if we look at other solutions (ignoring those solved by cloud-init) like vmware or xenserver:

• normally has a full, working installer for windows including the needed drivers (down to host-channel comms i think)
• normally has some rpm/deb with the dependencies fulfilled on any normal system or a self-contained installer
• freebsd and others are not supported on the ISO, most likely the reason WAS storage space in old ESXi and then likely the knowhow left the respective company.
• xenserver used to even include a kernel, luckily that's not our business.
• IDK what it looks like with vONEcloud.
• VirtualBox CD includes only drivers, but they also don't mess around with the networking in the first place.

it would be needed to investigate which distribution-packages are not in a "base" install of the respective distro. (minimal, handcrafted installs don't really matter since they get generated by someone who can just add the context packages and dependencies)

a user-friendly solution would also include the virtio drivers for windows, so they can be imported in rescue modes and during install, allowing people to properly use virtio disks. IIRC xen works even without PV disk drivers, just slow, which can increase the install/repair times, but the main thing here is: if we just need to drop a file on the iso and it solves stuff for people, it should be considered.

an alternative to the dependency issue would be to have a extracted checkout of the repo, and document the command to do things.

say, a command that then mimicks the cdrom udev rule, and then runs all of /mnt/cdrom/etc/one-context.d/* failing commands would fail but visibly, and networking would likely be ok. people can then install the context package from sources. but this is not a nice thing...

personally, i'd say we could put the packages there and a script which

• asks if he wants to bring up only the network
• asks if he wants to install anyway, bring up only the network, and then trigger a reinstall of the package, ask user to reboot to set everything up
• checks if context can be installed without dep issue. if yes, ask user to reboot to set everything up

I think the windows context can be just included and will work. Having 20kb of drivers in place would probably make it more useful though. And I'm quite sure a sysadmin running Windows would expect it.

[vholer]

Hi Florian,

thank you for such detailed description. Let's start the easy way, for the next context release we'll try to release the ISO just with the context packages and get some more feedback. As the Linux and Windows packages have their own release process, let's have one ISO for each platform for this time.

But, if you are still willing to sponsor this development and have more work done following your ideas, please contact Tino cvazquez@opennebula.systems to discuss this as a part of the Fund a Feature program.

Thank you, Vlastimil

[OpenNebulaSupport]

Also, it would be interesting to be able to update critical virtualization related drivers like virtio drivers.

[atodorov-storpool]

addon-storpool tm/context already supports adding the contextualization packages to the context iso... https://github.com/OpenNebula/addon-storpool/blob/master/tm/storpool/context#L120

[rsmontero]

That's a good idea indeed! and probably easier to maintain/distribute...