Moving to a packer based build system can still reuse the same scripts and recipes to build a systemvmtemplate which is agnostic of who/how you build it. With lack of time and resources, moving to debian9 based systemvmtemplate is a much needed effort and moving to a new build system can be a next step.
The current build system may not be perfect, may be tricky to setup at first. Most recently updated docs are at tools/appliance/README.md, if anyone has issues you may ping me and I may be able to help. Now back to the topic of supporting debian9 as systemvmtemplate base, I was able to get something up and running this weekend and get serial console. I could also verify some patching done by the systemvm.iso file however I'm facing issues with running cloud-early-config, postinit and cloud services in a certain order and I need help around the systemd scripts. Here's the PR: https://github.com/apache/cloudstack/pull/2211 The PR branch is pushed on ASF remote so any committer can collaborate with me by pushing changes/fixes as a separate commit on that branch, feel free to do so. Thanks. - Rohit ________________________________ From: Paul Angus <paul.an...@shapeblue.com> Sent: Monday, July 31, 2017 11:11:53 AM To: dev@cloudstack.apache.org Subject: RE: [DISCUSS] Move to Debian9 systemvmtemplate Depending on the timescales that we looking at, if we can get an agreement to use Packer going forward, there is an argument to say that spending time getting the Debian 9 template to work on VeeWee and then on Packer is wasted effort and that we should just use this as the opportunity to move over to Packer/Debian9. Having spent the weekend fighting with RVM/VeeWee/Ruby. And finding that we've hard linked rvm to Ruby 2.1.1 when it's now on 2.4, Veewee hasn't been updated for years and other mismatches. I'm very interested to see other options explored. Veewee doesn't do the disk conversions at them moment, so we can still keep that a separate process for corner cases that Packer (or something else) can't manage.. Kind regards, Paul Angus paul.an...@shapeblue.com www.shapeblue.com<http://www.shapeblue.com> 53 Chandos Place, Covent Garden, London WC2N 4HSUK @shapeblue rohit.ya...@shapeblue.com www.shapeblue.com 53 Chandos Place, Covent Garden, London WC2N 4HSUK @shapeblue -----Original Message----- From: Rohit Yadav [mailto:rohit.ya...@shapeblue.com] Sent: 28 July 2017 20:30 To: dev@cloudstack.apache.org Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Move to Debian9 systemvmtemplate I think we can move to packer once we can get the Debian9 based systemvmtemplate to work. I think we should focus on doing this first and then focus on migration to a new build system as a next step. I spent some time today and with some help from veewee authors, I could get a base template up and running: https://github.com/apache/cloudstack/pull/2211 The above PR branch is pushed on ASF remote and allows for cross-collaboration with all ACS committers. Please collaborate with me on this and feel free to push changes on the branch as separate commits and/or make changes to the PR. Thanks. - Rohit ________________________________ From: Tim Mackey <tmac...@gmail.com> Sent: Friday, July 28, 2017 3:59:36 AM To: dev@cloudstack.apache.org Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Move to Debian9 systemvmtemplate Syed, I did a bunch of work on XenServer with Packer [1] before leaving Citrix. My stuff works rather well and was tested with XS 6.2, 6.5 and 7. It shouldn't be hard to validate with newest XS and updated Packer - I just lack the infra to do the testing. [1] https://github.com/xenserverarmy/packer -tim rohit.ya...@shapeblue.com www.shapeblue.com<http://www.shapeblue.com> 53 Chandos Place, Covent Garden, London WC2N 4HSUK @shapeblue On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 11:19 AM, Syed Ahmed <sah...@cloudops.com> wrote: > -1 on Arch as well. Moving to Debian 9 seems the wiser choice IMO. > I've used Packer before and I really like it, the only downside that I > see is that Packer lacks support for XenServer VHD images. There is > some work on a XenServer plugin but I haven't tested that. If the > community decides to use Packer, I can do some initial validation of it on > XenServer. > > Thanks, > -Syed > > On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 3:19 AM, Wido den Hollander <w...@widodh.nl> > wrote: > > > > > > Op 24 juli 2017 om 19:07 schreef Rene Moser <m...@renemoser.net>: > > > > > > > > > Hi Rohit > > > > > > > > > On 07/23/2017 06:08 PM, Rohit Yadav wrote: > > > > All, > > > > > > > > > > > > Just want to kick an initial discussion around migration to > > > > Debian9 > > based systemvmtemplate, and get your feedback on the same. > > > > > > > > Here's a work-in-progress PR: https://github.com/apache/ > > cloudstack/pull/2198 > > > > > > Have you considered to replace veewee by packer? > > > > > > > Packer is really nice indeed. We use it to build our templates [0] > > which we use on CloudStack. > > > > Building the SSVM using Packer should be rather easy I think. > > > > [0]: https://github.com/pcextreme/packer-templates > > > > > Our friends from schubergphilis have already done some work here > > > https://github.com/MissionCriticalCloud/systemvm-packer. > > > > > > However there would be also an official way to convert the > > > definitions https://www.packer.io/guides/veewee-to-packer.html > > > > > > Regards René > > >
