Support
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Please send all queries, patches, bug reports etc. to the
et-mgmt-tools mailing list:

  http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/et-mgmt-tools

Source repository
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If you have Mercurial installed, then:

  hg clone http://hg.et.redhat.com/virt/applications/virt-p2v--devel

Background reading
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About Live CDs / livecd-creator tool:

  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLiveCD/LiveCDHowTo

The files in this directory
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p2v.ks.in

  Kickstart file which describes how to build the live CD.  This is
  essentially the configuration file for livecd-creator.  Most
  importantly it lists the RPMs which are needed on the live CD.

virt-p2v

  This is the virt-p2v P2V configuration tool itself.  It is
  installed on the live CD as /usr/bin/virt-p2v and runs after the
  live CD has booted.  All the P2V stuff happens from this script. It
  uses the 'dialog' program to ask questions.

inittab

  Replacement /etc/inittab (for init-based systems).

tty1

  Replacement /etc/event.d/tty1 (for upstart-based systems).


iso-attach

  Attach newer virt-p2v scripts to pre-built ISOs (used by 'make update').

extras/

  Anything under here is copied onto the ISO squashfs.  In particular
  this contains paravirt drivers for Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
  CentOS and friends.

Tips for OCaml
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All the packages you need are in Fedora and Debian.

If using emacs, make sure you install tuareg-mode (the editing mode
for OCaml).  Unfortunately there is no Fedora package for it at the
moment, but it is very easy to install.

General implementation plan
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User boots the live CD.  The job of the live CD is to:

(a) Find local disks.

(b) Copy the disk image(s) over to the Xen host.

(c) Change certain files (eg. /etc/fstab may contain references to
disk devices, which need to be changed when running under Xen).

(d) BUT, the live CD must be totally non-destructive.  It cannot
modify the local disks in any way.

(e) The above steps are not automatic.  We need to ask the user some
questions along the way.

For (a) there are various methods to detect local devices.  We sniff
for devices in /sys/block.

For (b) we can simply use 'dd' and 'ssh'.  The general plan is to do
this:

  dd if=/dev/disk | ssh -C xenhost 'cat > /var/lib/xen/images/disk.img'

For (c) we can use device-mapper snapshots to mount a ramdisk above
the disks themselves.  This allows us to make non-destructive changes
to files, and still see the "modified" block device (d).  A hairy
script looks for candidate files to modify.