[virt-tools-list] virt-install and cloud-init, feedback wanted

[Daniel P. Berrangé]

On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 11:07:24AM +0000, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 10:34:14AM +0000, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 08:18:01PM -0500, Dusty Mabe wrote:
> > > Basically in Fedora CoreOS we need a generic user data mechanism that works across
> > > platforms (x86_64, aarch64, ppc64le, s390x) and doesn't have possible race conditions.
> > > Right now we're using `-fw_cfg` but it's not cross platform. We don't have an answer
> > > yet: https://github.com/coreos/ignition/issues/666#issuecomment-452835654
> > 
> > For platform portability you need to find some device that is common
> > across all platforms, and either disk or network are the only two
> > good options that exist today or for the forseeable future.  If those
> > aren't acceptable then all we have left are platform specific options.
> 
> While it's not a "good option that exists today", AF_VSOCK would be a
> good choice to settle on in the future.  It's completely cross
> platform, available for Windows, and doesn't interfere with existing
> network or disk devices.
> 
> Would needing virtio be a barrier?  Our impl of AF_VSOCK runs over
> virtio, but there are other transports.

>From a cloud-init POV, I don't see virtio as a barrier. Defining an
AF_VSOCK data source for it should be quite straightforward really
and they already have so many data sources, it seems reasonable
that they'd accept one more.

On the host side there's still the task of providing a metdata
service to expose the data, which is outside scope of virt-install.

Regards,
Daniel
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