[virt-tools-list] Re: [libvirt] Create a new VM from an existent image?

[Jun Koi]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Jun Koi<junkoi2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 10:45 AM, Jun Koi<junkoi2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 1:19 AM, Cole Robinson<crobinso at redhat.com> wrote:
>>> (taking to virt-tools-list, this isn't relevant to libvirt)
>>>
>>> Jun Koi wrote:
>>>> On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 1:59 AM, Cole Robinson<crobinso at redhat.com> wrote:
>>>>> Jun Koi wrote:
>>>>>> On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 10:42 PM, Cole Robinson<crobinso at redhat.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> Jun Koi wrote:
>>>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> To use libvirt, I am strying to use virt-install to create a new VM
>>>>>>>> from an existent (KVM) VM image. I did the following steps:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 1) run libvirtd with "libvirtd -d" (I use the latest libvirt git tree)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 2) Run virt-install (0.400.3) with my existent image in img/img.winxp
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> # virt-install --import -n winxp -f img/img.xp3 --vnc --hvm
>>>>>>>> --accelerate --ram 800
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> That looks fine.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> However, this step returns error like:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> "ERROR    Could not find usable default libvirt connection."
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If 'virsh --connect qemu:///system' doesn't work, you probably didn't
>>>>>>> configure your libvirt install correctly.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> But it works! So the problem stays elsewhere.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Do you have any suggestion?
>>>>>>
>>>>> Hmm, then you probably need this patch to virtinst, since our URI detection
>>>>> likely isn't as thorough as libvirt:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://hg.et.redhat.com/cgi-bin/hg-virt.cgi/applications/virtinst--devel/rev/030fbc6df74f
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I got the latest code from hg tree, and installed that.  But running
>>>> "virt-install" (without option) returns the error message:
>>>>
>>>> Traceback (most recent call last):
>>>>   File "/usr/local/bin/virt-install", line 36, in <module>
>>>>     from virtinst.VirtualCharDevice import VirtualCharDevice
>>>> ImportError: No module named VirtualCharDevice
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> How to fix this problem?
>>>>
>>>
>>> There must be an install issue, you shouldn't have this issue. My guess is
>>> /usr/local/bin/virt-install isn't looking at the newly installed virtinst libs.
>>>
>>> What command did you use to install? What distro are you on? What does:
>>>
>>> python -c 'import virtinst; print virtinst'
>>>
>>> show? It should list the path to the newly installed virtinst, the one via
>>> your distro.
>>
>> It prints out: <module 'virtinst' from 'virtinst/__init__.py'>""
>>
>> I checked again, and see that virt-install was installed into
>> /usr/local/bin, which might not be the right place? It should be in
>> /usr/bin, right? So how to install virt-install there?
>>
>> If that matters, I install virt-install by running "python setup.py
>> install". I am on Ubuntu 904, and I heard that Python 2.6.2 on this
>> distro has some problems with installation, so that they always put
>> code into /usr/local/ (??)
>
> I tried to install virt-install again, with command:
>
> python setup.py install --prefix=/usr
>
> Then I run "virt-install" again (without option). This time I got the
> below error:
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>  File "/usr/bin/virt-install", line 36, in <module>
>    from virtinst.VirtualCharDevice import VirtualCharDevice
> ImportError: No module named VirtualCharDevice
>
>
> So it is still the same problem as before. Do you have any hint?
>
> My impression is that so far, libvirt stuff is not well supported in
> Ubuntu, but only in Fedora Core.

I had another attempt on another Ubuntu (8.04), and it seems to work
this time. Ubuntu 804 use older Python 2.5.2, and that makes the
difference?

However, when I run the below command to import an existent KVM image:

virt-install --import -n xp3 -f img/img.xp3 --vnc --hvm --accelerate
--ram 1000 --prompt

I got the question: "How large would you like the disk img/img.xp3 to be?"

This is really confused to me: it seems virt-install is trying to
create a new image, while all i want to do is to *import* image (I
already specified --import above), but not to create a new one.

How to fix this?

Thanks,
J