* Alok Aggarwal ([email protected]) wrote: > Currently the VM constructor part of DC uses > VirtualBox cli to construct VM images. This > is all well and good except for the fact that > the the vbox cli keeps changing rather frequently > which results in breakages such as the following - > > 13237 Virtual Machine Constructor doesn't support > building VM's with VirtualBox 3.1 > https://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=13237 > > Thus, it seems prudent to investigate an alternate > way of generating VM images, one that doesn't rely > on the vbox cli's as much. > > Just recently, I did some experiments where I > was able to - > > a) Create a plain file and export it as an iSCSI > target > b) Install OpenSolaris into that iSCSI target > c) After the install was done, take that installed > instance encapsulated in a file and convert it > into a VDI/VMDK with vdiskadm(1M) > d) Boot a vbox instance off of a text installer > media and import the root pool contained in that > VDI/VMDK * > e) Boot another vbox instance with the resultant > VDI/VMDK > > This effectively limits the use of vbox cli's > significantly, it's only needed in (d). > > What do people think about re-tooling VMC to use > this approach instead?
Not to steal any of Sanjay's thunder, he and I had a discussion about this approach yesterday. Using an iSCSI target as you've outlined only buys us better observability during the installation. You still have to deal with the VBOX interfaces in exactly the same way (even just for D). You'll still have to use the VBOX interfaces to configure a VM, boot it and then export the resultant VM. So, you aren't really removing the VBOX evolving interface problem. You are solving the 'how can I observe the installation process' problem. Cheers, Glenn _______________________________________________ caiman-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/caiman-discuss
