[Users] Re: [Devel] vzpkg

[Kir Kolyshkin]

Robert Nelson wrote:
> Kir Kolyshkin wrote:
>>
>> Also see my comments below.
>>
>> Robert Nelson wrote:
>>> Is anyone actively working on vzpkg?
>>>
>>> I've been rewriting it to eliminate the dependence on yum and rpm, 
>>> so that it also works for Debian and hopefully some day Gentoo.  
>>> This also eliminates the requirement for vzyum, vzrpm, vzrpm43 and 
>>> vzrpm44.  vzpkgadd, vzpkgrm, vzpkgls and vzpkgcache would just do 
>>> the right thing.  This would also fix the incompatibilities between 
>>> working with packages from the HN and from within the VE.
>>
>> That sounds interesting, do you have a git repo or something I can 
>> take a look at?
>>
>
> I haven't got a repo set up but I could set one up pretty easily.
>
>> So, how are you solving the problem of different RPMDB versions? You 
>> know, if you have used rpm-4.2 to create/manage an RPM database, the 
>> moment you use rpm-4.3 on it will become incompatible with rpm-4.2. 
>> The only way to fix that would be to use only specified RPM version.
>>
>> We can definitely use rpm from inside a VE only, but then another 
>> problem of duplicate downloads arises.
>>
>
> This problem was pretty easy to solve once I figured out what was 
> going on.  I just remove the __db.* files before and after running 
> commands in the HN then RPM automatically rebuilds them on the next 
> command.
Hmm... __db* files are just some temporary cache, removing those are 
safe (and is sometimes required) but it's not gonna help.

Here's a simple test:

1. Create a container using some template cache which uses RPM of 
different version than one on your host system. For example, CentOS4 
uses rpm-4.3, CentOS 5 -- rpm-4.4

2. Start a container:
# vzctl start NNN

3. Check container's RPM is working fine (it should at this point):
# vzctl exec NNN rpm -q rpm

4. Check if host RPM is working:
# rpm --root /vz/root/NNN -q rpm

5. Check if container RPM is working:
# vzctl exec NNN rpm -q rpm

Sure you can insert removing of __db.* files in the appropriate places 
and see if it helps.

> For the yum-cache, I mount the /vz/template version of the cache into 
> the VE.  I do the same for the apt/archives on Debian.

If you do it read-only, how do you handle the case yum/apt wants to 
write something to it?

If you do it read-write, how can you make sure that an evil container 
root will not put some home-baked Trojaned packages into that area?

>
>>> Is this something that you would like to incorporate into the product?
>>>
>>> One of the things I noticed was that there was a lot of duplication 
>>> in scripts and data files.  This is because everything is stored in 
>>> an OS/Version/Platform/Config directory, even though there may not 
>>> be any difference between the corresponding files between platforms 
>>> or even Versions.
>>>
>>> I have a change which is backwards-compatible which allows config 
>>> directories anywhere in the template tree.  Files lower in the tree 
>>> override any specified higher in the tree.
>>>
>>> For example, instead of this directory structure:
>>>
>>>    /vz/template
>>>       centos
>>>          4
>>>             i386
>>>                config
>>>                    minimal.list
>>>                    yum.conf
>>>                    ...
>>>             x86_64
>>>                config
>>>                    minimal.list
>>>                    yum.conf
>>>                    ...
>>>
>>> You would have:
>>>
>>>    /vz/template
>>>       centos
>>>          config
>>>             minimal.list
>>>          4
>>>             i386
>>>                config
>>>                   yum.conf
>>>                   ...
>>>
>>> This eliminates a lot of duplicate work and is less error prone.
>> Will the minimal.conf in 
>> /vz/template/centos/5/i386/config/minimal.list be an addition to, or 
>> a replacement for /vz/template/centos/config/minimal.list?
>>
> Currently it is a replacement, in all the templates I looked at the 
> files were exactly the same.  The *.list files just list the desired 
> functionality which doesn't change, the big changes are the 
> dependencies which are handled automatically.  But they definitely 
> don't differ between architectures for the same release.
>
> I handle things a little differently for Debian / Ubuntu since 
> debootstrap files provide the initial set.  Packages listed in the 
> *.list file are added to a --include option to debootstrap, if they 
> have a trailing - then they are added to --exclude.
>> In case it's addition, say you have a package called httpd in 
>> /vz/template/centos/config/minimal.list. What if in CentOS 6 we don't 
>> want package with that name, but want something called httpd3 
>> instead? I mean, we can definitely add more packages, but how can we 
>> "remove" packages?
>>
>> In case it's a replacement, I doubt that "generic" file will work -- 
>> every major version of a given distro have some changes in the 
>> minimal.list.
>>>
>>> I can provide a diff of this change against the current git if you 
>>> are interested.
>>>
>>> If there is interest in any of this work please let me know the 
>>> process for getting the changes reviewed and incorporated into the 
>>> product.
>>
>> I put users@ to cc: in order to bring some more attention to the 
>> topic. I am definitely interested so let's discuss it further (for 
>> now my biggest concern is rpmdb compatibility problem described above).
>