[virt-tools-list] Virt Tools Survey: What to do about virt-clone

[Juerg Haefliger]

> (a) Is cloning guests useful for you or not?  Often or infrequently?

I don't 'clone' in the strict sense of the word. I create a base raw
OS image and provide that image to other users as a common starting
point for them to setup their guests. I don't care about the XML
definition, just the raw image file. Hopefully I won't have to do that
too often once the base image is stable/mature. But it needs to be
done every time I'll have to support a new OS variant.


> (b) Do you currently use virt-clone to clone guests?

Nope. Don't know what it does, never looked into it.


> (c) Do you have a homebrew method to clone guests?  What does it do?

Plain 'cp' to 'clone' the image.


> (e) When you clone a guest, do you "sysprep" it or would you like to?
> (Using the term "sysprep" generically here, I mean any sort of
> reinitialization for Linux or Windows guests).

Before making the image available to potential users, I 'sanitize'
(what you call 'sysprep') the image. Currently, I only support SL6 and
all this step accomplishes is purging the persistent-net udev rule and
removing the MACADDR from ifcfg-eth0 so that eth0 comes up when the
image is used in a new KVM instance. This is done by loading a little
script into the guest, running it and then removing it again, using
libguestfs.


> (f) How do you feel about a multi-step process?
>
>  virt-clone -> virt-sysprep -> virt-resize (for example)

Sounds fine to me as long as there is sufficient control over what
each step is doing and as long as it can be automated without the need
for a fancy GUI.


...Juerg