----------------------------------------------------------------------
Implement febootstrap command.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Complete the Haskell bindings (see discussion on haskell-cafe).
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Complete the bindings tests - must test the return values and
+error cases.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+For virt-inspector:
+
+ - Make a libvirt XML config
+
+ - Test over available OSes
+
+ - Add 'reged' / NT registry support.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Use virtio_blk by default. It's faster and more natural.
+Unfortunately it seems like this will rename all devices - see next
+item.
+
+Note: virtio_blk *IS* supported by all our minimum platforms,
+ie. CentOS 5.3, Fedora 11, Debian.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+"Device independent" naming for devices.
+
+With a Fedora-based appliance, using libata driver, devices have
+"SCSI" names like /dev/sda.
+
+With an EPEL-based appliance, using old ide driver, devices have names
+like /dev/hda.
+
+If we use virtio_blk, devices will have names like /dev/vda.
+
+What a mess.
+
+So the idea would be to add a device independent naming scheme, such
+as the one used by grub:
+
+ "(hdX)" X = 0 means 'a', X = 1 means 'b' and so on.
+ "(hdX,Y)" Device X, partition Y (in grub, this counts from 0 which is
+ deeply confusing).
+
+There would have to be a very simple rule. If guestfsd was expecting
+a /dev block device or partition name, then the alternate form can be
+used, and we would just look it up using the normal output of
+guestfs_list_devices.
+
+Maybe best is to use /dev/sda as the "standard" naming. That
+shouldn't cause conflicts in the appliance because we tightly control
+what drivers are available.
+
+Note there's a lot of hackery that currently exists in tests.c which
+could be *removed* if we made this change.
+
+Open: Should the substitution be done in the library layer or in the
+daemon?
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Qemu options -- After discussion with the KVM developers, they have
+recommended some flags which will improve the safety and reliability
+of KVM. Need to test that these also work under qemu (or at least, do
+no harm):
+
+-no-hpet HPET support is broken and should be disabled.
+
+-rtc-td-hack Keeps the rtc clock source track time correctly.
+
+-drive file=...,if=[ide|virtio],cache=off
+ cache=off is necessary to improve reliability in the
+ event of a system crash when writing.
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+"Standalone/local mode"
+
+Instead of running guestfsd (the daemon) inside qemu, there should be
+an option to just run guestfsd directly.
+
+The architecture in this mode would look like:
+
+ +------------------+
+ | main program |
+ |------------------|
+ | libguestfs |
+ +--------^---------+
+ | | reply
+ cmd | |
+ +----v-------------+
+ | guestfsd |
+ +------------------+
+
+Notes:
+
+(1) This only makes sense if we are running as root.
+
+(2) There is no console / kernel messages in this configuration, but
+we might consider capturing stderr from the daemon.
+
+(3) guestfs_config and guestfs_add_drive become no-ops.
+
+Obviously in this configuration, commands are run directly on the
+local machine's disks. You could just run the commands themselves
+directly, but libguestfs provides a convenient API and language
+bindings. Also deals with tricky stuff like parsing the output of the
+LVM commands. Also we get to leverage other code such as
+virt-inspector.
+
+This is mainly useful from live CDs, ie. virt-p2v.
+
+Should we bother having the daemon at all and just link the guestfsd
+code directly into libguestfs?
git.annexia.org / libguestfs.git / blobdiff