Re: [Libguestfs] Man pages for virt-p2v-server?
On 29/09/11 03:20, Greg Scott wrote:
I spoke too soon...
I booted my Win2003 host from a virt-v2v CD, 0.8.3 I think, made a
couple weeks ago. It prompted for a hostname and root password, which I
supplied. And then a message appeared on the bottom in red, "Remote
server does not define any profiles in /etc/virt-v2v.conf"
So looking at /etc/virt-v2v.conf and studying its man page, it looks
like virt-v2v.conf does have a couple of profiles defined, some with
method RHEL, some with method libvirt. If I'm understanding how this
works, that method line defines the output of a migration. And other
profile attributes are equivalents for virt-v2v command switches. But
then it has a few<network> sections that don't look like they are part
of any profile.
So apparently that virt-v2v CD is looking for a particular profile
relevant to the host it boots from, or maybe a profile with certain
specific attributes. How do I figure out what this profile should look
like?
I prefer to call these 'target profiles', because they define the target
of a conversion. That is, they define what the target is (RHEV or
libvirt), where it is, what guest storage format will be written there
and how the guest's networks will be connected there. Incidentally, the
network mappings which aren't inside a profile are global defaults. They
existed before we added profiles, and they're still useful so we haven't
deprecated them.
The example virt-v2v.conf contains 3 example profiles. However, because
they're only examples they're commented out[1], which is why the P2V
client complained about it. In fact, *everything* in the default config
file is commented out now. This is because we moved the
not-really-user-facing config to /var/lib/virt-v2v/virt-v2v.db.
In short, edit your virt-v2v.conf, copy one of the 3 example profiles
and change the specifics. The man page explains what all the attributes
mean.
And then a feature request - I wonder if it would be easier all around
if the virt-p2v CD would prompt for the attributes it wants instead of
looking for a profile on the conversion host? If prompting is not
feasible, is there any guidance available or maybe some template
profiles to use when migrating with virt-p2v?
I considered this at the time and rejected it. I wanted to keep the P2V
client as simple as possible, and centrally defined profiles seemed a
good way to achieve this. I'm not completely wedded to this decision: if
I'm convinced that definition on the client is simpler I might change
it. However, I'm not yet convinced.
Matt
[1] Incidentally this is easy to miss if, like me, you're used to syntax
highlighting. This is because the file doesn't have a .xml extension,
and vim at least won't highlight it. If you manually 'set filetype=xml'
in vim it'll switch on highlighting, and the commented sections are easy
to see. If you're an emacs user, enjoy your RSI ;)
--
Matthew Booth, RHCA, RHCSS
Red Hat Engineering, Virtualisation Team
GPG ID: D33C3490
GPG FPR: 3733 612D 2D05 5458 8A8A 1600 3441 EA19 D33C 3490