Garfield's Opensource News: Fedora Weekly News #146

-- Fedora Weekly News Issue 146 --

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 146 for the week ending October 5, 2008.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue146

In this issue of FWN, Max Spevack covers the announcement of the beta
for Fedora 10 (Cambridge) and reminds us of the upcoming Fedora Board
IRC chat. Oisin Feeley provides another detailed look into Fedora
development, covering the recent PATH:/sbin discussion, efforts to speed
up Modprobe and MAKEDEV, announcement of the Fedora 10 early branch for
developers, and more. Jason Taylor writes on documentation, including
discussion on changing language codes in Fedora and the beginnings of an
ongoing debate on how to properly document examples of system commands.
Runa Bhattacharjee, writing for the translation project, provides detail
on the Fedora 10 translation dates and summarizes the most recent
meeting of the translation team. Huzaifa Sidhpurwala updates us on
discussion on the infrastructure list, including metalinks for Fedora 10
downloads. Nicu Buculei covers the release of the second issue of the
art team excellent voice, Echo Monthly News, and Paul Frields' recent
request for a remix logo, a secondary watermark for derivative spins.
David Nalley brings us up-to-date on the latest security advisories for
Fedora 8 and 9 issued this past week. Finally, Dale Bewley gets us
current with the many happenings on the four virtualization lists he
covers -- the Enterprise Management Tools, Fedora Xen, library
virtualization and oVirt development lists.

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see
our 'join' page[1].

FWN Editorial Team:

Pascal Calarco
Oisin Feeley
Huzaifa Sidhpurwala

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join

---

* 1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 146
o 1.1 Announcements
+ 1.1.1 Fedora 10 (Cambridge) Beta
+ 1.1.2 Fedora Board IRC Meeting
o 1.2 Developments
+ 1.2.1 PATH:/sbin Tab Confusion
+ 1.2.2 Speeding-up Modprobe and MAKEDEV
+ 1.2.3 Uniform Proxy Settings
+ 1.2.4 Fedora 10 Early Branch Now Available
+ 1.2.5 SELinux - Copying ISO Files
o 1.3 Documentation
+ 1.3.1 New Language Codes
+ 1.3.2 Command Examples Documentation
o 1.4 Translation
+ 1.4.1 F10 Translation deadline revised to 21st
October 2008
+ 1.4.2 Fedora Translation Project meeting held
o 1.5 Infrastructure
+ 1.5.1 func logrotate fix
+ 1.5.2 metalinks for F10 download pages
+ 1.5.3 smtp-server?
o 1.6 Artwork
+ 1.6.1 The latest news about Echo icons
+ 1.6.2 Remix logo
o 1.7 Security Advisories
+ 1.7.1 Fedora 9 Security Advisories
+ 1.7.2 Fedora 8 Security Advisories
o 1.8 Virtualization
+ 1.8.1 Enterprise Management Tools List
# 1.8.1.1 virt-manager Adds Disk and Network I/O
Graphs
# 1.8.1.2 virt-manager Supports Multiple Serial
Consoles
# 1.8.1.3 Maintaining VM State While Restarting
libvirtd Needed
+ 1.8.2 Fedora Xen List
# 1.8.2.1 No Dom0 Support in Fedora 10
+ 1.8.3 Libvirt List
# 1.8.3.1 Running Xen Guests Without xend
# 1.8.3.2 cgroups API and LXC Driver Support
# 1.8.3.3 libvirtd Multi-threaded Support in the
Works
# 1.8.3.4 Host Device Enumeration API
# 1.8.3.5 SDL Display Support for QEMU Driver
+ 1.8.4 oVirt Devel List
# 1.8.4.1 oVirt Web API ala EC2 Web Services
# 1.8.4.2 QPID Modeling Framework and libvirt-qpid
# 1.8.4.3 Booting Guest From ISO Image

-- Announcements --

In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project.

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/

Contributing Writer: Max Spevack

-- Fedora 10 (Cambridge) Beta --

Jesse Keating announced[1] the release of Fedora 10 Beta. "Just on the
heels of the Fedora Project's fifth anniversary, the Beta of Fedora
Linux version 10 (code-named Cambridge) is now available."

Among the new, fun, and interesting features:

* New NetworkManager with connection sharing
* Improved printer handling
* Remote virtualization and easier virt storage
* Sectool, an auditing and security testing framework
* RPM 4.6, the first big RPM change in several years

[1]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00016.html

Additionally, Jesse reported[2] "there was a small problem during image
creation that led to the x86_64 Live KDE actually being the content for
the x86_64 Live XFCE. I have recreated these images and updated the
master mirror and the torrent server."

For full disclosure, here are the SHA1SUMs of each:

6f32b75c09838a407371aec211e1951d357baf03 *F10-Beta-x86_64-Live-KDE.iso
04195ea383229bdd356188e86ba8c39985118abb *F10-Beta-x86_64-Live-XFCE.iso

[2]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00017.html

-- Fedora Board IRC Meeting --

Paul Frields reminded[3] everyone that "the Board is holding its monthly
public meeting on Tuesday, 7 October 2008, at 1800 UTC on IRC Freenode."

The public is invited to do the following:

* Join #fedora-board-meeting to see the Board's conversation. This
channel is read-only for non-Board members.
* Join #fedora-board-public to discuss topics and post questions.
This channel is read/write for everyone.

The moderator will direct questions from the #fedora-board-public
channel to the Board members at #fedora-board-meeting. This should limit
confusion and ensure our logs are useful to everyone.

[3]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-October/msg00000.html

-- Developments --

In this section the people, personalities and debates on the
@fedora-devel mailing list are summarized.

Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley

-- PATH:/sbin Tab Confusion --

Some time ago (2008-04-23) it was proposed[1] by Tom Callaway to append
/sbin\ and /usr/sbin to the path of non-root users. The rationale was to
make it easier for non-root users to use tools which are traditionally
perceived as "administration" tools, for example ifconfig, parted and
fdisk. A good overview of the problem was posted[2] by Behdad Esfahbod .
An excellent compendium of objections to the proposal posted[3] by
Enrico Scholz encapsulates most of the problems perceived at the time.
Several prolonged discussions on the topic mostly centered[4] around
alternate strategies which included moving binaries from /sbin to /bin,
symlinking from one to the other directory, or setting up[5] sudo by
default.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-April/msg01625.html

[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-April/msg01661.html

[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-April/msg01649.html

[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-April/msg01727.html

[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-April/msg01629.html

The case for moving many of the binaries was made[6] strongly by David
Cantrell and arch-skeptic Ralf Corsepius voiced[7] a general objection
that "[...] this discussion is as old as */sbin exists [... and I]
consider both proposals to be populist propaganda." After much thrashing
out of the issue the proposal was coalesced[8] in the Feature named
"/sbin Sanity" and /usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin were appended to the
PATH of normal users of Fedora 10. A related change suggested was to
allow firstboot to configure sudo to grant the first created user all
privileges but this feature is not present in Fedora 10 Beta.

With the release of Fedora 10 Beta some of the predicted daily
inconveniences of the change have been realized[9]. Matt Miller (who had
been consistently opposed to the change) reported that command-line
completion was cluttered with multiple unwanted choices: "We've just
made the command line a lot less user friendly for common use in
exchange for an ugly fix to a small inconvenience." In a wryly humorous
post he noted that due to wanting /etc/profile.d to continue working he
could not simply set a static path. Stephen Smoogen joked[10] that Matt
was the "[...] first systems administrator I have met in several years
who hasn't had /usr/sbin:/sbin in their default path. You sure they
didn't make you a manager and didn't tell you?" and added that "I think
the chance for putting it back is still there.. if someone is willing to
do the work on the hard but correct way? I think it was crickets the
last couple of times when volunteers were asked for that." Nigel Jones
was among several who asserted[11] that typing the full paths was what
they preferred and Stephen admitted[12] that he had received some
offlist ribbing and promised to mend his ways: "I am removing
/sbin:/usr/sbin from my path and learning to type /usr/sbin for the
commands I have 'shortcutted' over the years. Next I will be removing
the bad habit of '/sbin/sudo bash' :)"

[6]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-April/msg01732.html

[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-April/msg01761.html

[8] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SbinSanity

[9]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00001.html

[10]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00003.html

[11]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00004.html

[12]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00181.html

Ville Skyttä and Matt Miller volunteered[13] to take up the burden of
moving appropriate binaries out of /sbin and into /bin in order to help
revert the change.

[13]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00003.html

Over on @fedora-desktop Rahul Sundaram suggested a kickstart snippet
which would add the first user to the wheel group and add blanket
permissions to the wheel group in /etc/sudoers . Colin Walters
agreed[14] with the concept but wondered "[a]re we too far into the F10
process for this?"

[14]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2008-October/msg00006.html

-- Speeding-up Modprobe and MAKEDEV --

Inspired by Arjan van de Ven's five-second Asus EeePC boot and
Mandriva's work on similar topics Jakub Jelinek posted[1] his patches to
improve the speed of modprobe and MAKEDEV. He hoped that this sharing
would result in more community experimentation. The first patch enables
depmod -a to produce compact binary files which can be searched for
aliases and dependencies more quickly than the standard text files,
which are still also produced. The patch to MAKEDEV similarly reduces
the size of the searched files, in this case config files, and improves
the efficiency of an inner loop. The times appeared to be decreased by
several orders of magnitude according to the sample figures posted by Jakub.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00043.html

Kyle McMartin was excited[2] and suggested that "[t]he biggest win by
far for MAKEDEV is profiling the often hit devices, and prioritizing
things. Dave Airlie moved a bunch of the cciss and other almost
never-seen devices to be sourced last and ended up with a huge win."
Bill Nottingham responded[3] that MAKEDEV ought not to be run at boot at
all. Jakub Jelinek was not optimistic that the MAKEDEV patch would be
applied upstream as he noted[4] that he had sent it upstream over ten
months ago.

[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00046.html

[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00047.html

[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00054.html

-- Uniform Proxy Settings --

The issue of constructing a uniform method of enforcing proxy settings
for applications was raised[1] by Kulbir Saini. He complained
"[w]henever I try a new version of Fedora, the first problem I face is
setting the proxy. It seems for almost every application, I have to
specify proxy at a different place."

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00097.html

A reply by Simon Andrews recapped[2] previous debates on the topic by
pointing out the twin problems of a lack of a common setting and the
inability of many applications to update their proxy settings on the
fly. Simon suggested that a localhost proxy could be forced on all
applications if NetworkManager were to contain hooks to re-route local
proxy requests either directly to the internet or via a secondary proxy.
He admitted "this all feels a bit icky to me - but I can't think of a
nicer way of doing this which doesn't require the cooperation of the
authors of every proxy-aware application."

[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00159.html

Nicolas 'kwizart' Chauvet had also thought about the problem and made[3]
some changes to libproxy which he hoped would solve the problem. Dan
Winship wrote[4] a great post explaining that libproxy could adaptively
use whichever backend was appropriate for the environment in which it
was used and although it was not widely used by applications it looked
set to become an integral part of GNOME.

[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00098.html

[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00185.html

After Colin Walters commented[5] that he would like to "[...] see the
desktop standardize around libsoup[6] , for two primary reasons: 1)
Mainloop integration 2) Hopefully forthcoming support for reading
Firefox cookies [...]" a minor flamewar erupted when James Antill
wondered "Why do "desktop people" keep proposing things that are _only_
acceptable in a monolithic desktop application?" with reference to the
mainloop integration. This developed into a comparison[7] between future
scenarios in which PackageKit overrode yum downloads in a desktop
scenario versus the simplicity of using yum on the command line. James
was scathing on the subject of ignoring actual users (whom he asserted
prefer gnome-terminal) to "[...] 60+ year olds who don't, and are about
to be a majority of our users RSN."

[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00188.html

[6] libsoup is a GNOME client/server library for HTTP used in evolution,
seahorse and rhythmbox among others and is integral to the OnlineDesktop.

[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00201.html

-- Fedora 10 Early Branch Now Available --

Jesse Keating announced[1] on 2008-10-01 that it was now possible for
developers wishing to concentrate on stabilization to branch their
packages. A link to request a branch was provided. In response to Jeroen
van Meeuwen it was explained[2] that this was not mass-early-branching
but was an attempt to satisfy two classes of maintainers: those that
needed to continue future development and those that used the entire
development cycle for the current release.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00083.html

[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00126.html

Michael Schwendt rejected[3] the idea as "[u]nconvincing and not
helpful", citing increased bureaucracy as the main negative outcome and
suggesting that a potential cascade of maintainers scrambling to branch
and rebuild in response to early branches of dependencies would result.

[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00202.html

-- SELinux - Copying ISO Files --

A paraliptic swipe at SELinux by Jon Masters asked[1] "[...] how is the
*average* user supposed to [...] copy the content of /mnt over to e.g.
/somewhere/fedora/9/i386 for NFS installs [?]" Dan Walsh was
surprised[2] and responded "Why would the copy fail? cp should just work
and set the files to the context of the destination directory. If this
fails it is a bug." Jon conceded[3] that there was a bug and segued into
a mini-rant on SELinux.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00140.html

[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00154.html

[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00203.html

Jesse Keating offered[4]: "The average user double clicks on the iso in
Nautilus, which mounts it for them. Then they click/drag the fileset to
where they want it and Nautilus copies it for them."

[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00174.html

-- Documentation --

In this section, we cover the Fedora Documentation Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject

Contributing Writer: Jason Taylor

-- New Language Codes --

There was some discussion[1] this week between the docs team and members
of the translation team about changing the language codes in the Fedora
documentation. The proposed change(s) would make the Fedora
documentation, in this case the Release-Notes compatible with ISO naming
standards.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-September/msg00097.html
-- Command Examples Documentation

Murray McAllister brought to light some discussion recently about how to
properly document examples of system commands[1]. There was some
interesting discussion on list about how to go about this and we look
forward to a consensus in the near future.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-October/msg00008.html

-- Translation--

This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n)
Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N

Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee

-- F10 Translation deadline revised to 21st October 2008 --

The software and documentation translation deadlines for Fedora 10 has
been revised to 21st October 2008[1][2][3][4]. The decision was taken
after a meeting last week between John Poelstra and the Translation and
Documentation teams. Currently, the Fedora Translation and Documentation
teams are finalizing the process of task scheduling in perspective of
the main Fedora Release Engineering schedule which would be used for
future Fedora releases as well.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00019.html

[2] http://poelstra.fedorapeople.org/schedules/f-10/f-10-docs-tasks.html

[3] http://poelstra.fedorapeople.org/schedules/f-10/f-10-trans-tasks.html

[4] http://poelstra.fedorapeople.org/schedules/f-10/f-10-all-tasks.html

-- Fedora Translation Project meeting held --

The fortnightly meeting of the Fedora Translation Project was held on
30th September 2008[5], chaired by Dimitris Glezos. Issues discussed
included an update of the translation schedule revision and problems
with publican documents on the status page. Additionally, Robert-André
Mauchin raised a concern about identification of new translators for a
language, being sponsored into the cvsl10n group.

[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00017.html

-- Infrastructure --

This section contains the discussion happening on the
fedora-infrastructure-list

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure

Contributing Writer: Huzaifa Sidhpurwala

-- func logrotate fix --

Mike McGrath wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [1] that he would
like to implement a global fix to logrotate in which /etc/init.d/funcd
condrestart would be replaced by /etc/init.d/funcd condrestart >
/dev/null. The reason for the fix is because the original config is
generating spam. However [[JonStanley|Jon Stanley] opposed this[2],
saying that it violates the concept of a change freeze. However at the
end the change was implemented.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00219.html

[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00224.html

-- metalinks for F10 download pages --

Matt Domsch wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [3] that
mirrors.fp.o now supports metalinks [1]. metalinks are XML documents
that act like a yum mirror list, but with more detail, allowing client
download tools to more easily select a mirror that will be fastest for them.

[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-October/msg00010.html

Jeffrey Ollie asked if these links were supposed to work on firefox,
atleast for testing [4] on which Jesse replied that there was some work
done on Mirror Manager yesterday and they should be working.

[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-October/msg00014.html

-- smtp-server? --

Thomas Spura wrote on @fedora-infrastructure-list [5] and asked "Why
isn't it possible to configure an smtp-server to send username
fedoraproject org mails?" To this Mike replied that in In your mail
client you should be able to set a @fedoraproject.org address. Many
other providers support this as well (like gmail for example) [6]

[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-October/msg00013.html

[6]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-October/msg00016.html

-- Artwork --

In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork

Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei

-- The latest news about Echo icons --

Martin Sourada announced[1] on @fedora-art a new issue of the Echo
Monthly News[2], a periodic publication outlining the development in the
last month for the Echo icon set. We covered part of them in Fedora
Weekly News, but for those interested in details, it is a good read,
covering the following topics: "1. New Icons; 2. Updated Tutorials; 3.
Guidelines Update; 4. Releases; 5. Echo Enabled in Rawhide as Default
Icon Set;6. Icons We Need to Create for F10; 7. Roadmap Updates".

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00021.html

[2] https://fedorahosted.org/echo-icon-theme/wiki/MonthlyNews/Issue2

-- Remix logo --

Paul Frields asked for a logo graphic, a secondary wordkmark, on
@fedora-art: "Having a secondary wordmark, a community-usable mark for
derivative spins, will help drive more interest in Fedora", a process
crossed with @fedora-marketing "I'll start a discussion about the
wording for the mark on Fedora Marketing List which anyone should (as
always) feel free to join". After receiving input from marketing and
legal the name was settled to "fedora remix" and a wiki page[2] was
created to hold the proposals. So far it has evolving proposals from
Nicu Buculei, Mairin Duffy, Clint Savage and Jayme Ayres.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00514.html

[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pfrields/Secondary_trademark_design

-- Security Advisories --

In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce.

https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce

Contributing Writer: David Nalley

-- Fedora 9 Security Advisories --

-- Fedora 8 Security Advisories --

-- Virtualization --

In this section, we cover discussion on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list,
@fedora-xen-list, @libvirt-list and @ovirt-devel-list of Fedora
virtualization technologies.

Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley

-- Enterprise Management Tools List --

This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list

-- virt-manager Adds Disk and Network I/O Graphs --

Guido Günther submitted[1] a patch for virt-manager to display with disk
and network input/output graphs in addition to the CPU and memory
utilization graphs.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-October/msg00026.html

-- virt-manager Supports Multiple Serial Consoles --

Cole Robinson patched[1] virt-manager to combine "the serial console
window with the VM details window. Opening the serial console now
appends a tab to the details view. In addition, multiple serial consoles
are now supported, not just the primary/first defined console, though
this still only works for 'pty' devices."

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00109.html

-- Maintaining VM State While Restarting libvirtd Needed --

Upgrades of libvirt necessitate a restart of libvirtd. Guido Günther
asked[1] if there was any progress on saving enough state to restart
libvirtd without restarting any guests. Daniel P. Berrange replied[2]
this has been solved for the LXC driver and the same approach may apply
to the QEMU driver.

[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00093.html

[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00094.html

Guido pointed[3] out "This would solve the problem of restarting
libvirtd. How are we going to distinguish this from daemon shutdown on
e.g. system reboot?" To which, Daniel B. proposed[4] "We can probably
distinguish by picking a specific signal for orderly shutdown of the
daemon + vms, vs a simple restart." Adding, "Perhaps we should have an
explicit API, or a convenient virsh command to shutdown all VMs in one go."

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-October/msg00046.html

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-October/msg00047.html

-- Fedora Xen List --

This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list.

-- No Dom0 Support in Fedora 10 --

Daniel P. Berrange laid[1] it out there. "There is pretty much zero
chance that Fedora 10 will include a Xen Dom0 host. While upstream Xen
developers are making good progress on porting Dom0 to paravirt_ops,
there is simply too little time for this to be ready for Fedora 10. So
if you need to use Fedora 10 as a host, then KVM is your only viable
option at this time. If you can wait for Fedora 11 (or use RHEL-5 /
CentOS-5) then Xen may be an option for you." See also FWN 143[2].

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00035.html

[2]
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue143#Laying_the_Groundwork_for_Xen_Domain_0_Support

-- Libvirt List --

This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list.

-- Running Xen Guests Without xend --

Stefan de Konink asked[1] if users could someday run xen guests without
a xend running. Gerd Hoffmann said[2] there are patches queued up which
begin to allow qemu to do this. Adding, "If things work out well we
might have that in the F11 timeframe." Assuming Dom0 support in the
pv_ops based kernel is completed.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00402.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00406.html

-- cgroups API and LXC Driver Support --

Dan Smith posted[1] a patch set which "adds basic cgroup[2] support to
the LXC driver. It consists of a small internal cgroup manipulation API,
as well as changes to the driver itself to utilize the support."

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00415.html

[2] http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/cgroups.txt

Dan agreed[3] to "reswizzle" the API after Daniel P. Berrange
commented[4], "My thought on the overall design of this internal API is
that it is too low level & pushing too much work to the caller." Also,
"While LXC driver is the only current user, as more controllers are
added I anticipate that QEMU driver might use cgroups, eg for I/O
controls and CPU schedular controls. As such I'd expect an API to be at
a slightly higher level of abstraction, strongly typed and a single
cgroup object associated with a domain object."

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00436.html

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00434.html

There was discussion of how to mount the controllers. The cgroups kernel
interace is less than ideal, because[5] "...once you mount a particular
controller, you can't change the way it's mounted. So if libvirt mounted
each controller separately, then the admin couldn't have a mount with
multiple controllers active, and vica-verca."

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00432.html

This prompted Balbir Singh to begin a new thread recommending[6] the use
of libcgroups[7] rather than an internal implementation. Adding, "I
understand that in the past there has been a perception that libcgroups
might not yet be ready, because we did not have ABI stability built into
the library and the header file had old comments about things changing.
I would urge the group to look at the current implementation of
libcgroups (look at v0.32) and help us."

[6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00095.html

[7] http://libcg.sf.net

Daniel Veillard pointed[8] to issues of dependency and API completeness
raised[9] in the past. "In the meantime we got a relatively simple,
sufficient for now, usable right now, patch fullfilling our needs."
Adding support for taking Dan Smith's patch with it's internal cgroups
implementation.

[8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00097.html

[9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00096.html

Dhaval Giani offered[10] that version 0.32 of libcrgoups will be
available in Rawhide soon. The thread amicably continued on in great
detail about the implementation details of libcgroups.

[10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00103.html

-- libvirtd Multi-threaded Support in the Works --

Daniel P. Berrange posted[1] "I've been doing some proof of concept work
to make the libvirtd daemon multi-threaded, and this in turns mean that
the QEMU / LXC / OpenVZ drivers need to have some degree of locking on
their internal data structures." The internal APIs extensive use of
linked lists makes fine grained locking of objects very difficult, which
lead to Daniel's series of patches aimed at removing all use of linked
lists.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00054.html

-- Host Device Enumeration API --

In August David Lively announced[1] an intent to work on an API[2] for
host device enumeration, creation, and deletion. Daniel P. Berrange
inquired[3] as to the status of the work. The "oVirt guys" are keen to
have the functionality ASAP.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00548.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-April/msg00005.html

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00398.html

David reported[4] progress on HAL-based and more limited DevKit-based
drivers and posted a preliminary patch. Daniel B. concurred[5] that "HAL
is clearly the more portable option for a little while to come, but for
Linux at least DeviceKit will (eventually) be the preferred way to
access this kind of info." David later gave[6] up on DevKit for now.
Work continues on the API.

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00423.html

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00430.html

[6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00076.html

-- SDL Display Support for QEMU Driver --

Daniel P. Berrange posted[1] a patch to enable SDL displays for QEMU.
Daniel explained "QEMU has two modes of providing a graphical display,
VNC and SDL. Now most of our tools just use VNC, but occasionally people
want to use SDL for some crazy reason. We already support this in Xen
driver, but the QEMU impl has been rather lacking."

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00037.html

-- oVirt Devel List --

This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list.

-- oVirt Web API ala EC2 Web Services --

Noel Rocher asked[1] if there was web-enabled API similar to EC2[2]
which could be used manage guest images and instances. Hugh O. Brock
explained[3] there is a REST API for scripting most oVirt operations,
soon to be accompanied by a command-line interface. However, the API is
in early stages and poorly documented.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00520.html

[2] http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00521.html

-- QPID Modeling Framework and libvirt-qpid --

Ian Main wanted to say[1] a few words about the patches to libvirt-qpid
into ovirt which "provides an interface with libvirt using QMF[2] (qpid
modeling framework) which utilizes the AMQP[3] protocol. The Advanced
Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) is an open standard application layer
protocol providing reliable transport of messages."

"QMF provides a modeling framework layer on top of qpid (which
implements AMQP). This interface allows you to manage hosts, domains,
pools etc. as a set of objects with properties and methods."

"With this patch in place, you can log into the WUI, and use qpid-tool
(a generic qpid QMF client) to view and manipulate nodes/domains/pools etc."

QPID was added[4] to libvirt in September.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-October/msg00017.html

[2] http://cwiki.apache.org/qpid/

[3] http://jira.amqp.org/confluence/display/AMQP/

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00388.html

-- Booting Guest From ISO Image --

Darryl L. Pierce is adding[1] support for booting a VM from an ISO
image. After adding an ISO image to the Cobbler server on the appliance
with the full NFS URL needed to mount it, "If the filename ends in
'.iso' then the virtual machine will mount the file as a CDROM device
and boot it. Otherwise, it mounts it as a hard disk device." There
remains a bug which requires manual intervention to complete the boot
from CDROM.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-October/msg00028.html

--- End FWN #146 --

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