Re: [Libguestfs] Which ISO format/layout does virt-builder expect?
On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 07:53:55PM +0000, Scott Gorton wrote:
My build process creates a custom ISO image which is subsequently
used to kickstart an Oracle X4-2 server using PXE. The ISO is a
minimal install and contains a suite of packages and customization
scripts to properly configure our box during first boot. The
process works great for kickstarting baremetal machines as well as
VMs created with virt-manager or vsphere.
I'd like to be able to use virt-builder to build virtual images
automatically (i.e., take our .ISO and generate a qcow2 of a
properly installed system). Unfortunately, virt-builder doesn't
seem to like the format of my ISO image. The tool dies during the
"Setting passwords" step because it's attempting to create a temp
file in /etc and my ISO doesn't have an /etc directory at this
point.
ISOs are not modifiable by the Linux kernel :-( So none of the tools
like guestfish, virt-customize etc etc can work on them. It doesn't
matter what options you use, the problem is in the Linux ISO driver
(and possibly the ISO format -- I've no idea if it's plausible to
write a driver than can modify ISO).
For virt-p2v, we also need an ISO and a PXE image, and I would dearly
like to use virt-builder to create it. I tried looking into ways to
build one using virt-builder, but it's a much harder problem than it
appears.
In summary, if you find a way, please let us know :-(
The virt-p2v scripts we have so far are:
https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/blob/master/p2v/virt-p2v-make-di...
(documentation:
http://libguestfs.org/virt-p2v-make-disk.1.html)
https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/blob/master/p2v/virt-p2v-make-ki...
(documentation:
http://libguestfs.org/virt-p2v-make-kickstart.1.html)
Rich.
--
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
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