Re: vmdebootstrap sprint report

[Steve McIntyre]

On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 08:53:11AM -0200, Tiago Ilieve wrote:
>Vincent,
>
>> There has been some efforts around bootstrap-vz for cloud images inside
>> the Debian Cloud team. Zigo also has its own tool to publish "blessed"
>> Openstack images (but they work fine for other clouds too). As far as I
>> know, this plan to also provide official Debian VM images was not
>> discussed with those parties.
>>
>> It's a bit a pity to see the existing efforts just discarded.
>
>I *really* hope that there is some kind of misunderstanding here. Since the
>first time I heard about vmdebootstrap, on Steve McIntyre's report about Debian
>CD BoF at DebConf15[1], I thought that it was a tool related to Live Images
>only. It's scary to think that its intention is to also replace a tool like
>bootstrap-vz that has been used for years, is currently maintained and is
>pretty stable. Specially when not even mentioning this to the Debian Cloud
>Team.

vmdebootstrap is a generic tool which *can* be used as a base for all
sorts of live-type images. To the best of my knowledge, there's no
grand plan by anyone to force this (or *any* tool) on
anybody. However, as Riku pointed out at DC15 we have *many* different
image generation tools in use in and around Debian and it might be
nice to share some efforts and tools where it makes sense in future.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
 English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on
 occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them
 unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."  -- James D. Nicoll

Re: vmdebootstrap sprint report

[Tiago Ilieve]

Vincent,

> There has been some efforts around bootstrap-vz for cloud images inside
> the Debian Cloud team. Zigo also has its own tool to publish "blessed"
> Openstack images (but they work fine for other clouds too). As far as I
> know, this plan to also provide official Debian VM images was not
> discussed with those parties.
>
> It's a bit a pity to see the existing efforts just discarded.

I *really* hope that there is some kind of misunderstanding here. Since the
first time I heard about vmdebootstrap, on Steve McIntyre's report about Debian
CD BoF at DebConf15[1], I thought that it was a tool related to Live Images
only. It's scary to think that its intention is to also replace a tool like
bootstrap-vz that has been used for years, is currently maintained and is
pretty stable. Specially when not even mentioning this to the Debian Cloud
Team.

[1]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2015/09/msg00030.html


-- 
Tiago "Myhro" Ilieve
Blog: https://blog.myhro.info/
GitHub: https://github.com/myhro/
LinkedIn: https://br.linkedin.com/in/myhro
Montes Claros - MG, Brasil

Re: vmdebootstrap sprint report

[Antonio Terceiro]

On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 08:53:11AM -0200, Tiago Ilieve wrote:
> Vincent,
> 
> > There has been some efforts around bootstrap-vz for cloud images inside
> > the Debian Cloud team. Zigo also has its own tool to publish "blessed"
> > Openstack images (but they work fine for other clouds too). As far as I
> > know, this plan to also provide official Debian VM images was not
> > discussed with those parties.
> >
> > It's a bit a pity to see the existing efforts just discarded.
> 
> I *really* hope that there is some kind of misunderstanding here. Since the
> first time I heard about vmdebootstrap, on Steve McIntyre's report about 
> Debian
> CD BoF at DebConf15[1], I thought that it was a tool related to Live Images
> only. It's scary to think that its intention is to also replace a tool like
> bootstrap-vz that has been used for years, is currently maintained and is
> pretty stable. Specially when not even mentioning this to the Debian Cloud
> Team.
> 
> [1]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2015/09/msg00030.html

FWIW, I recently added code to generate VM images with vmdebootstrap to
the debian-vm-templates repository of the cloud team:

http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/cloud/debian-vm-templates.git/tree/vmdebootstrap-generic-qcow2

There is no special reason for that, it uses vmdebootstrap just because
it's what I already know how to use, and it fullfils my needs.

So strictly speaking, vmdebootstrap is not a novelty for 100% of the
cloud team. That does not invalidate, however, the point about the
existance of other tools and the expectation about the cloud team having
input in the choice of tool for building official VM images even if in
the end the choice is at the discretion of the debian-cd team.

-- 
Antonio Terceiro 


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Re: vmdebootstrap sprint report

[Norbert Preining]

> only. It's scary to think that its intention is to also replace a tool like
> bootstrap-vz that has been used for years, is currently maintained and is
> pretty stable. Specially when not even mentioning this to the Debian Cloud
> Team.

Read up on recent - let's say - slightly surprising and unconcerted
forceful takeover of live-build.

It speaks stories about what has become possible in Debian.

Norbert


PREINING, Norbert   http://www.preining.info
JAIST, Japan TeX Live & Debian Developer
GPG: 0x860CDC13   fp: F7D8 A928 26E3 16A1 9FA0  ACF0 6CAC A448 860C DC13

Re: vmdebootstrap sprint report

[Sam Hartman]

> "Norbert" == Norbert Preining  writes:

>> only. It's scary to think that its intention is to also replace a
>> tool like bootstrap-vz that has been used for years, is currently
>> maintained and is pretty stable. Specially when not even
>> mentioning this to the Debian Cloud Team.

Norbert> Read up on recent - let's say - slightly surprising and
Norbert> unconcerted forceful takeover of live-build.

Norbert> It speaks stories about what has become possible in Debian.

Hi.
first, I really appreciate all the work that has gone into live-build,
which I've used for years, and which I have the experience to
appreciate.
I' also appreciate the work that has gone into vmdebootstrap and
debootstrap-vz, which I've never personally used.

Speaking as someone who has used Debian images from a lot of different
sources and someone interested in consistency, it would be good if we
did work to get to a point where:

1) All these images are consistent.  I think I want the same things from
an image I install on a VM, an image I install in a private cloud and an
image I install on a public cloud.
I think I want the same thing out of a live image where I've removed
live-boot and live-config.

2) As someone who ends up building cloud images for my business,
building live images, and who has build installers and images for small
derivatives, I'd really appreciate  fewer rather than more tools.  This
is an area where I think it's important to  be consistent and to spend
the extra effort to get tools that work for everyone.


Speaking as an individual member of the TC, I'd like to see us do that
in a way that grows our project and empowers our contributors.  It
really really sucks to spend effort on a project and have your effort
not acknowledged, or taken into account.  For myself at least I find
disagreement, especially when my input was considered, much easier to
take than what feels like the lack of respect that comes from being
ignored or discarded without being involved in the process.
I fully realize that a simpler explanation for those feelings is
sometimes that people didn't know about my efforts.

It sounds like we have some important work to do here to reconcile some
differences and get to a point where we're a project on this issue
rather than a collection of disconnected teams and views.  I think image
creation is important enough where that is very much worth doing.

--Sam

Re: vmdebootstrap sprint report

[Paul Wise]

On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 9:45 PM, Sam Hartman wrote:

> I'd really appreciate fewer [image build tools] rather than more tools.

This has been a topic of discussion since at least 2009 and probably
earlier. Since then the problem has gotten worse, not better. Of
course, it didn't help that the live-* packages were forced to use the
live-* namespace even though they can build more than just live
images, presumably people assumed they had to create more tools. More
recently there was a talk on this topic at DebConf15. Since DebConf it
has only gotten worse, there is live-build-ng and also Joey Hess'
propellor software gained the ability to create disk images.

https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/246/creating-bootable-debian-images/
http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/propelling_disk_images/

I believe that due to the nature of image build tools, their number is
probably only ever going to grow, not shrink.

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise