Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 07:54:29 -0700 From: Tim Kientzle <kientzle@freebsd.org> To: Glen Barber <gjb@freebsd.org> Cc: FreeBSD Hackers <hackers@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Beyond Buildworld Dev Summit Working Group Report Message-ID: <F3BF3B6C-AB53-4E35-A049-CCF930C6F2BE@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <20130611050234.GB1627@glenbarber.us> References: <DDED955A-C7D1-409E-BEA8-DED8538AA47C@neville-neil.com> <8FC4A83C-0C91-471A-9962-1A67FE115A67@freebsd.org> <20130611050234.GB1627@glenbarber.us>
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[-- Attachment #1 --] On Jun 10, 2013, at 10:02 PM, Glen Barber wrote: > On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 09:25:39PM -0700, Tim Kientzle wrote: >>> • Crochet with VM images [TimKeintzle], [GlenBarber], [ColinPercival] >> >> Per Colin, there's no way for "mere mortals" to upload machine >> images to Amazon, so there's little point in pursuing that. >> >> I did recently add support to Crochet for building VMWare VM images >> directly. Works pretty well; I've been using it to build throw-away >> images for testing. This goes a step further than what Glen >> has recently announced; so far, he's just building the VMDK disk >> image, Crochet fills in the rest of the VM configuration files. >> >> It should be routine to duplicate the approach to support other >> VM environments (e.g., Parallels, VirtualBox, OFA). My time is >> limited but I'm happy to assist if someone else wants to work on it. >> > > I do intend to look at how Crochet does this, because I think your > implementation is far more user friendly and cross-application > compatible. > > I'll certainly pick your brain on it, if you don't mind. Key point: VM images are directories which contain a number of different files. The disk image is just one of those. For VMWare (and others I've looked at), the VM directory contains: * Disk image - this can be a straight disk image (which is what Crochet currently uses) or a structured/sparse/compressed "virtual disk" * Disk descriptor -- this specifies the format of the disk image and the parameters of the virtual disk drive. * VM descriptor -- this describes the rest of the virtual hardware. VMWare seems to be the simplest of the ones I've looked at: the descriptor files are lists of key/value pairs and the VMWare software can boot a VM even from a pretty skeletal definition. It didn't take me very many tries to get Crochet to build a VMWare image that VMWare Fusion was comfortable booting. It helps that the VMWare file formats are pretty well documented: In particular: http://sanbarrow.com Parallels and OFA both use more complex XML configuration files -- everything has an ID and there are lots of cross-references. I've toyed with building Parallels VMs but haven't gotten very far yet. qemu-img seems like a nice tool for generating a virtual disk image, but it doesn't currently know how to create compressed VMWare disks. I've skimmed VMWare's documentation and it doesn't look too hard to build a compressed VMWare disk if someone would like to tackle that. ;-) Tim [-- Attachment #2 --] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.18 (Darwin) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJRtzomAAoJEGMNyGo0rfFBq68H/iWlwnyjZtxDAwOOrNOrf5+C 4nx5yGRUXm5uZPqAecQvNs6C8ENZXmDS93woKfsrUcFdYeFJXr+XNCMGaRUFUm/W OuH5ls+aKuM4gWCdSiPiiTgIeeGEvtDoMBj2tNB/1Neq43b4gBS7DA1IeEcbLdoF E1z5uZ3DAtUN+ZjPMtxkONzDum6shtDODNtIlX+uNeKKCMSP0Yxw/8gv9hWOG6j7 E40SX65uhEUyYqsrrlIXlJSO3K4wrB7k/eOAOflKcQz8FYfs2r211ouN0H58E5Ey hnpC5FKdjhCMFK2MIwfqDs9ki8p5J38P3dOik5vkuICYbDH5OmQ3aa3XDZE390s= =v8Zi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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