[Engine-devel] New tool to upload OVF archives

[Keith Robertson]

> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Keith Robertson"<kroberts at redhat.com>
>> To: "Omer Frenkel"<ofrenkel at redhat.com>, "Andrew Cathrow"<acathrow at redhat.com>
>> Cc: "Shahar Havivi"<shaharh at redhat.com>, engine-devel at ovirt.org
>> Sent: Wednesday, December 7, 2011 2:35:06 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Engine-devel] New tool to upload OVF archives
>>
>> On 12/07/2011 03:01 AM, Omer Frenkel wrote:
>>> <snip
>>> first some clarifications so we could talk in the same language:
>> Agreed.  It's actually pretty hard to describe all of this.
>>> image in vdsm called image-group in rhevm (and stands for a whole
>>> disk)
>>> it can have one or more volume(s) which is called image in rhevm
>>> (and stand for snapshots of the disk)
>>>
>>> so now, every volume file has a .meta file, and the image id is
>>> written there (under IMAGE=)
>> I have noticed that when I tell oVirt to import an image that it will
>> import it even if there isn't a .meta file.  As such, I would like to
>> know if a .meta file required or will oVirt automatically generate
>> one?
>>> so without it i don't think its a valid image entirely,
>>> if for some reason the image id is missing, it should be taken from
>>> the volume meta file.
>>>
>>>
>> Here is a use case that illustrates some of the issues that I am
>> facing:
>> 1. Assume the following OVF archive.
>> |
>> |- 5272b689-cd9f-4532-9b5d-2413eb7b9402.ovf<-- The OVF XML
>> |- c0e51e1b-004e-4d10-abc0-8b9f5e21f3ad<-- The COW image
>>
>> 2. In the exmple above, there is no directory  hiearchy defined in
>> the
>> archive (i.e. all files are in the root).
>> 3. Also, in the example above the file
>> "5272b689-cd9f-4532-9b5d-2413eb7b9402.ovf" appropriately refers to
>> the
>> image in it's XML without an "Image Group UUID" in the prefix.
>>
>> I can have the tool massage the XML and the directory layout so that
>> it
>> will upload to the export domain such that it looks like this...
>> <NFS EXPORT DOMAIN HERE>/virt/exports/
>> |----- images
>> |   |----- 2b30e705-c1d6-4bd8-a6cd-a1fe8a70614f<-- Generated UUID
>> |       |----- 5272b689-cd9f-4532-9b5d-2413eb7b9402
>> |---- master
>>       |---- vms
>>           |---- 5272b689-cd9f-4532-9b5d-2413eb7b9402
>>               |---- 5272b689-cd9f-4532-9b5d-2413eb7b9402.ovf
>>
>> Is this desireable?
> So is it valid to have an ovf and image in the root of the zip or do we require a subdirectory
Yes, it is valid in the XML.  The question is does oVirt support it.

Here are 2 odd-ball scenarios:
1. The image is deeply nested in the archive.
         dir1/dir2/dir3/.../dirN/cow-image-here
         Inside the XML you would have...
<File ovf:href="dir1/dir2/.../dirN/cow-image-here"

2. The image is in the root of the archive...
     cow-image-here
     Inside the XML you whould have...
<File ovf:href="cow-image-here"