[Users] I'm testing out vzpkg2!

[Robert Nelson]

Scott Dowdle wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> These questions are mostly for Robert Nelson and Kir but anyone can feel free to jump in.
>
> Wow.  I'm starting kinda late but I just got vzpkg2 and its associated packages installed today on a RHEL 5 x86_64 host node.  I'm in the process of building all 44 possible OS Templates as defined by the various vztmpl packages Robert has included.
>
> After I'm done building all of the OS Templates I'm going to create a container 19 times... one using each of the minimal/small OS Templates i386 / x86_64 / amd64.
>
> I have a few questions though:
>
> 1) The vztmpl naming scheme - I would rather see the version number used rather than the codename because I can never seem to remember which codename is what version.  Fedora has code names but we don't use those.
>
>   

Original I used the version numbers to be consistent with the other 
distributions.   However in Debian and Ubuntu the repositories are 
referenced by the code-names.  On the lists users refer to problems by 
code name "I have problem blah, blah on Etch" or "I'm running on Feisty 
and I see this happen ...".  So I changed it to use what the users find 
most natural.

> 2) The dummy packages - kir released a lot of new beta OS Templates and several of them used new dummy packages that changed the basic operation of containers made from them.  I believe Robert is using the older dummy packages.  When I say that the dummy packages change the operation of certain containers... here's what I mean... CentOS containers made with the beta OS Templates install and use udev.  Is this something we care about?  I know that with the old way, if you installed additional software in a container that pulled in udev it would often break the booting of that container... and you had to either edit the script that starts udev or remove udev.   Anyway, what should be done about that?
>
>   

I fixed the problems with udev getting installed.  The problem with udev 
being installed was that vzdummy had a fairly low version number, on 
newer versions of the OS a version of udev would be released that 
appeared to be newer so it would get installed.  On the version of 
vzdummy I created I set a ridiculously high version number so that it 
should never be superceded.

> 3) Container package managers - I'm of the opinion that every OS Template should have both the lower level package management tools (rpm & dpkg) as well as the higher level package management tools (yum & apt-get)... even in the minimal/small OS Templates.  Why?  Because container users go into the various IRC channels for the distros they are using and ask for help... and when the distro channel support folks find out yum is missing they freak out and call it a broken install.  Also, it should be easy for a container user to install new software.  Historically all .deb based OS Templates contained apt-get so why make .rpm based distro users suffer?  I know that vzyum was often used on the host node but given potential conflicts of package database versions I think it is advised to discontinue use of vzyum.
>
>   

Every template automatically gets the high level one (which includes the 
low-level one as a dependency) installed automatically regardless of 
what is in the .list file.

> 4) What defines small, minimal and default? - I know I can look at the config files and see a package listing but that doesn't necessarily show additional packages that are going to get pulled in to resolve deps... nor does one know exactly what services are going to start up automatically when you create a container.  Perhaps there are answers to these questions but I was always asking myself those questions when I would build an OS Template to add to contrib.  Are there any written guidelines on what should be installed at what level and what services should be started by default?
>
>   

I never bothered rationalizing the .list files, I just brought the old 
ones across to prove the new vzpkg was working.

> 5) Service modifications? - I know that in the beta OS templates there was an a package that modifies the apache config to have it only start up one listener.  Is that a package that needs to be used?  Does it work on all of the new target distros? (CentOS, Debian, Fedora and Ubuntu)?  Or is it something that should be dropped?
>
>   

Once all the functionality is tested and working then I plan on looking 
at the new Beta templates and making them work with the new vzpkg.

> I'll let you know what I find after I get all of the OS Templates build and containers created and minimally tested (do they start?, do they work on the network?).  I don't anticipate any problems.
>
> TYL,
>