[ovirt-devel] Progress report on Vdsm Debian packaging

[Milan Zamazal]

It should be now possible to connect Debian hosts to Engine, although
not instantly (see below).  You can start experimenting with VMs but
don't expect much for now.

If you'd like to play with fixing Vdsm on Debian, you can install the
package as follows:

- Use Debian testing (stretch) or unstable (sid).

- Clone Vdsm Debian repository:

  $ git clone git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/vdsm.git

- Fetch the corresponding upstream source:

  $ wget http://resources.ovirt.org/pub/ovirt-3.6/src/vdsm/vdsm-4.17.23.2.tar.gz
  $ mv vdsm-4.17.23.2.tar.gz vdsm_4.17.23.2.orig.tar.gz

- Install Vdsm build dependencies:

  # apt-get install debhelper dh-autoreconf dh-systemd python-dev \
      python-nose python-cpopen python-libvirt python-netaddr \
      python-pthreading python-pyinotify python-selinux python-six 

- Build the packages:

  $ cd vdsm
  $ dpkg-buildpackage

- Install the packages

  # dpkg -i ../vdsm*.deb

- Fix dependencies:

  # apt-get -f install

Now there are some things that you must perform manually:

- `kvm' group has dynamic gid on Debian, not 36.  So you must create
  your own group with gid 36 and put the related users to it.  This
  violates Debian policies but gid 36 is not allocated, so you can do it
  on your machine.  If there are more reasons than just Vdsm to make kvm
  group static with gid 36, please tell me.

- You must configure network interfaces manually, i.e. to create
  `ovirtmgmt' bridge in /etc/network/interfaces.d/ and disable your
  standard network interface (e.g. eth0) in /etc/network/interfaces.d.
  See `man interfaces' and `man bridge-utils-interfaces' for details.
  Alternatively, you can experiment with `net_configurator' Vdsm
  configuration option.

- You must also manually configure vdsm-ovirtmgmt network interface in
  libvirt.

If you're lucky, you should be able to start Vdsm now with systemctl and
connect the host to Engine.  Then it may be possible to create and start
very simple VMs, but you probably won't be able to do much more with
them (like connecting to their displays or powering them off).  Any
fixes are welcome.