Ubuntu – Automated install of Lucid guests on Lucid KVM Server

kvm-virtualizationUbuntuubuntu-10.04virt-install

We have an Ubuntu 10.04 server running KVM very nicely, but are having trouble figuring out the cleanest (and fastest) way to do unattended installs of 10.04 guests.

Requirements:

Must use LVM volumes for the guests'
storage (without some qemu-img
conversion or some such)
Must use virtio for network and disk
storage (preferably without hacking
in the XML files)
Must use a local mirror – so it's
quick (e.g. <5 minutes)
Really really want it to be fully automated and non-interactive. (i.e. kick it off and have a functional system running a few minutes later)
Would like to be able to specify the
ip address at initiation, so it's
easy to get to without looking at
the dhcp server.
Would like to be able to specify
different flavors / distros /
versions, etc.

Option 1:
We don't like doing this from virt-manager UI — because you have to be on the physical server (not using virt-manager remotely) to install to a LVM partition. This does work, but you have to be running VNC and Gnome on the server and that's not cool. Plus it's interactive and you have to click a lot of options, and we'd still want to write wrapper scripts that do this anyway.

Option 2:
vmbuilder from the python-vm-builder package seems like it's exactly what we want – because you can specify a local mirror (using apt-proxy for this) but haven't been able to get it to use LVM volume, nor use virtio for the disk.

vmbuilder kvm ubuntu –suite=lucid –flavour=virtual –arch=amd64 –mirror=http://192.168.1.1:9999/ubuntu -o –libvirt=qemu:///system –ip=192.168.1.94 –part=vmbuilder.partition –raw=/dev/VG0/LVtest –templates=mytemplates –firstboot=/root/vm/boot.sh –user=linuxadmin –name=linuxadmin –pass=secretpass –mem=256 –hostname=test –bridge=br0

This just ignores that –raw= part and creates a qcow image file — and doesn't use virtio. I suspect I could convert the image file to a LVM volume and manually add the virtio stuff in the XML, but that seems annoying and messy.

Option 3:
This is what we're using, but it's not optimal — because it's kludgey, doesn't allow us to specify the IP address, and we really can't dynamically control (from the install command / script) some of the parameters that are hardcoded in the kickstart file.

Manually create a Logical Volume — then…

# virt-install –connect qemu:///system
-n test -r 1024 –vcpus=1 –disk path=/dev/VG0/LVvm-test model=virtio
–pxe –vnc –noautoconsole –os-type linux –os-variant virtio26
–accelerate –network=bridge:br0 –hvm

This goes to a PXE boot server, which points to a local install server with a kickstart file that does a lot of the configuration. It DOES use virtio for both network AND disk, so that's good. It DOES use a local mirror and LVM, so that means it meets our minimal requirements, but we would like it to be 100% automated. Right now, you have to connect to the VNC console (via virt-manager) and select "Install" on the Lucid installer — so that breaks the fully automatic thing. And of course, you have to look in the syslog to see what IP address it got so you can ssh to the box.

Surely we're not the ONLY ONES that want this functionality!!!

Best Answer

in RHEV, you simply deploy VMs from a ready template, which is basically either a copy of the original template image or a snapshot from it (to save space)

I'm pretty sure that if you have a golden image of your build with everything in it, you can set it up to be a template, and your scripts will just clone it using qemu-img or even dd.

The template should have the VM-specific details, like ssh keys stripped (sys-unconfig in RHEL/Fedora, no idea how to do that in Ubuntu),so when a VM deployed from it is started, you get that data regenerated.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – KVM-Guest does not boot: qemudParsePCIDeviceStrs

Can you try stopping AppArmor "sudo /etc/init.d/apparmor stop; sudo /etc/init.d/apparmor teardown"

then restarting the VM!

Centos – how to install a CentOS 6.0 KVM guest on a CentOS 6.0 host server with virt-install and PXE

First install some requirements. (This might be more than actually needed)

yum -y groupinstall "X Window System"
yum -y groupinstall "Virtualization Client" 
yum -y groupinstall "Virtualization" 
yum -y groupinstall "Virtualization Platform" 
yum -y groupinstall "Virtualization Tools"
yum -y groupinstall "Desktop"
yum -y install xorg-x11-fonts-100dpi
yum -y install xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi
yum -y install xorg-x11-fonts-Type1 xorg-x11-font-utils
yum -y install man
yum -y install emacs

As stated in the question we already have an LVM volume group

[root@server ~]# vgs
  VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize VFree 
  vg0    1   3   0 wz--n- 8.18t 97.90g

First we create and define a libvirt storage pool from that LVM volume group

[root@server ~]# cat /tmp/foobar
<pool type='logical'>
  <name>pool0</name>
  <target>
    <path>/dev/vg0</path>
  </target>
</pool>
[root@server ~]# virsh pool-define /tmp/foobar
Pool pool0 defined from /tmp/foobar

[root@server ~]# virsh pool-start pool0
Pool pool0 started

[root@server ~]# virsh pool-autostart pool0
Pool pool0 marked as autostarted

[root@server ~]# virsh pool-list
Name                 State      Autostart 
-----------------------------------------
pool0                  active     yes

Per default libvirt already has a virtual network configured. It is named default. In this example we will redefine that virtual network so that we can use it for PXE install.

[root@server ~]# virsh net-list
Name                 State      Autostart
-----------------------------------------
default              active     yes       

[root@server ~]# emacs /tmp/default.xml
[root@server ~]# cat /tmp/default.xml
<network>
  <name>default</name>
  <forward mode='nat'/>
  <bridge name='virbr0' stp='on' delay='0' />
  <ip address='10.0.0.1' netmask='255.255.0.0'>
    <tftp root='/var/lib/dnsmasq/tftpboot' />
    <dhcp>
      <range start='10.0.0.2' end='10.0.255.255' />
      <host mac='02:54:00:13:be:e4' name='virt1.example.com' ip='10.0.0.2' />
      <host mac='02:52:2c:a3:11:42' name='virt2.example.com' ip='10.0.0.3' />
      <bootp file='/pxelinux.0' />
    </dhcp>
  </ip>
</network>

The MAC addresses, 02:54:00:13:be:e4 and 02:52:2c:a3:11:42 seen above are just some random MAC addresses. (see the serverfault question: how to generate a random MAC address from the Linux command line)

[root@server ~]# virsh net-destroy default
Network default destroyed

[root@server ~]# virsh net-undefine default
Network default has been undefined

[root@server ~]# virsh net-define /tmp/default.xml
Network default defined from /tmp/default.xml

[root@server ~]# virsh net-start default
Network default started

[root@server ~]# virsh net-autostart default
Network default marked as autostarted

[root@server ~]# mkdir /var/lib/dnsmasq/tftpboot      
[root@server ~]# ls -lZd /var/lib/dnsmasq/tftpboot
drwxr-xr-x. root root unconfined_u:object_r:dnsmasq_lease_t:s0 /var/lib/dnsmasq/tftpboot
[root@server ~]# yum install syslinux
[root@server ~]# rpm -ql syslinux | grep pxelinux.0
/usr/share/syslinux/gpxelinux.0
/usr/share/syslinux/pxelinux.0
[root@server ~]# cp /usr/share/syslinux/pxelinux.0 /var/lib/dnsmasq/tftpboot/
[root@server ~]# cd /var/lib/dnsmasq/tftpboot/
[root@server tftpboot]# wget -O centos-6-vmlinuz.x86_64 http://ftp.funet.fi/pub/Linux/mirrors/centos/6.0/os/x86_64/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
[root@server tftpboot]# wget -O centos-6-initrd.img.x86_64 http://ftp.funet.fi/pub/Linux/mirrors/centos/6.0/os/x86_64/images/pxeboot/initrd.img
[root@server tftpboot]# mkdir /var/lib/dnsmasq/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg
[root@server tftpboot]# cd /var/lib/dnsmasq/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg

The MAC address 02:54:00:13:be:e4 used above needs the configuration filename 01-02-54-00-13-be-e4. In other words prepend 01- and convert : into -.

[root@server pxelinux.cfg]# emacs 01-02-54-00-13-be-e4
[root@server pxelinux.cfg]# cat 01-02-54-00-13-be-e4
default local
prompt 1
timeout 50

label local
  localboot 0

label install
  kernel /centos-6-vmlinuz.x86_64
  append initrd=/centos-6-initrd.img.x86_64 ks=http://www.example.com/kickstart-files/virt1.example.com.txt device=eth0 ramdisk_size=9216 lang= devfs=nomount  

[root@server pxelinux.cfg]# cd

Here we assumed that the kickstart file for virt1.example.com can be downloaded from http://www.example.com/kickstart-files/virt1.example.com.txt

Now we run service libvirtd reload. This seems to be required for the dnsmasq tftpserver to run properly.

[root@server ~]# service libvirtd reload
Reloading libvirtd configuration:                          [  OK  ]

Now run virt-install to create the KVM guest virt1.example.com with 20 Gb disk space.

[root@server ~]# virt-install --debug --hvm --vnc --name virt1.example.com --os-type=linux --os-variant=rhel6 --pxe --network network=default,model=e1000,mac=02:54:00:13:be:e4 --disk pool=pool0,size=20 --ram 1024 --vcpus=1

Now the graphical program virt-viewer will pop up an X-window. When you see "boot: " during the boot sequence, type install.

A note about the virt-install command line options: Using model=virtio didn't work for me, but luckily model=e1000 worked just fine.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – KVM-Guest does not boot: qemudParsePCIDeviceStrs

Centos – how to install a CentOS 6.0 KVM guest on a CentOS 6.0 host server with virt-install and PXE

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