No reliable documentation on how to build RedHat flavoured VMS

We recently added a brief section on tools for obtaining pre-built images and building your own images:

http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-compute/admin/content/ch_image_mgmt.html

Right now we're really dependent on third parties for documenting how to create distribution-specific virtual machine images.
While Ubuntu is very good at providing ready-made VM images that are compatible with OpenStack <http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/>,the other distributions are not really there yet.

Would you be willing to contribute your notes back to the documentation project?

Hi Lorin,

Yes. We can do that.

Cheers

Martin

On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 11:21 PM, Lorin Hochstein
<email address hidden> wrote:
> We recently added a brief section on tools for obtaining pre-built
> images and building your own images:
>
> http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-
> compute/admin/content/ch_image_mgmt.html
>
> Right now we're really dependent on third parties for documenting how to create distribution-specific virtual machine images.
> While  Ubuntu is very good at providing ready-made VM images that are compatible with OpenStack <http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/>,the other distributions are not really there yet.
>
> Would you be willing to contribute your notes back to the documentation
> project?
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/993010
>
> Title:
>  No reliable documentation on how to build RedHat flavoured VMS
>
> Status in OpenStack Manuals:
>  New
>
> Bug description:
>  We have spent the 6 months attempting to build reliable Scientific
>  Linux 5.* instances for openstack. This has been a very frustrating
>  experience involving much trial and error. It would help enormously if
>  the there was a document describing how to do this with tools
>  available to standard redhat flavoured linux distributions.
>
>  It was really very surprising that the this entirely mainstream
>  distribution did not have such documentation.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/openstack-manuals/+bug/993010/+subscriptions

Assigning support of 80% of the Linux distro marketshare as "wishlist" priority seems VERY naive for a project that aims for large scale deployments.

Here are our guidelines for doc bug triaging. I believe this bug meets the criteria for "Wishlist" based on these criteria:
http://wiki.openstack.org/Documentation/HowTo#Doc_Bug_Triaging_Guidelines

where we want to have doc tasks be a "wishlist" item - not a low bug. I hope you understand the meaning here.

Hi Martin,

Are you able to find someone to write up a howto from your recent work making RHEL-like images?

Hi all,

This thread is from the Fedora Cloud SIG but the information on the tooling (appliance-creator) and the kickstart files also might be a helpful basis for doing EL-derived image builds:

    http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/cloud/2013-January/002192.html

I am happy to try assist by providing some content in this area.

Thanks,

Steve

Thanks Steve, that would be wonderful.

You can either dump some text here and I'll take it and merge it in, or, if you can there's a howto explaining the steps to contribute it directly yourself here: http://wiki.openstack.org/Documentation/HowTo

We're here to help!

I am happy enough to attempt to contribute myself, I use DocBook 4.5 for $DAYJOB but am comfortable enough with the differences. Just getting my account setup and in the right groups at the moment.

That's excellent :) Let us know if the CLA or Code Review process gets confusing - I hear it's getting even more streamlined in a month or so.

After experimenting some more and with some input from some of the developers it looks like if I restrict myself to "tools available in EL6" the easiest way is to use virt-install. I need to do some further testing of the kickstart I have been given but it's looking promising.

Hi Stephen,

Please consider also supporting RHEL 5. There are many uses cases for
RHEL 5, including the >100,000 machines on the Large Hadron Collider
Computing grid using Scientific Linux 5, based on RHEL 5.

Cheers

Martin

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 1:04 AM, Stephen Gordon <email address hidden> wrote:
> After experimenting some more and with some input from some of the
> developers it looks like if I restrict myself to "tools available in
> EL6" the easiest way is to use virt-install. I need to do some further
> testing of the kickstart I have been given but it's looking promising.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/993010
>
> Title:
> No reliable documentation on how to build RedHat flavoured VMS
>
> Status in OpenStack Manuals:
> Triaged
>
> Bug description:
> We have spent the 6 months attempting to build reliable Scientific
> Linux 5.* instances for openstack. This has been a very frustrating
> experience involving much trial and error. It would help enormously if
> the there was a document describing how to do this with tools
> available to standard redhat flavoured linux distributions.
>
> It was really very surprising that the this entirely mainstream
> distribution did not have such documentation.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/openstack-manuals/+bug/993010/+subscriptions

I think ideally it should work for both, but it might be necessary to *build* the EL5 images from an EL6 host. The process I'm looking at is somewhat similar to that described in the link below but using virt-install and a kickstart file to apply customizations and then using virt-sysprep (from libguestfs-tools) to edit the image scrubbing mac addresses etc:

http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-compute/admin/content/manually-creating-qcow2-images.html

I'm a little bit worried I'm reinventing the wheel here so if anyone has gotten further along with this feel free to pipe up!

Hi Stephen,

You may be the world expert at this point :)

How is this going - still interested?

Hi Tom,

Yes just getting back to this. Testing has taken some time, I think the "lowest hanging fruit" approach is to use oz, it is available in both the EPEL and RHOS repositories and appears to be capable of generating both EL5 and EL6 images.

I am just testing the additional customizations to make the resultant images OpenStack friendly at the moment (the main ones are simply ensuring there is an appropriate console setup and preparing it for key injection).

Steve

Just attaching a TDL I have successfully tested with Oz. This resulted in a RHEL 6.3 image that worked with my OpenStack environment. What is still required to improve this is:

- Ensure a suitable console is available (required for the Log tab to work in Horizon).
- Use cloud-init for key injection instead of the current solution (ideal but if I get this working as is I think that's good enough for a start).
- Provide an EL5 compatible version.

NB: The attached is based on a template available in this collection:

https://github.com/rackerjoe/oz-image-build/tree/master/templates

Lorin has proposed a new guide which looks like the right place for this gap to be addressed:

https://review.openstack.org/26624

Indeed! Thanks Stephen

This bug is solved by http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-image/content/centos-image.html