Adding open-vm-tools-desktop package to desktop group

[Ravindra Kumar]

Hi,

Currently, I'm maintaining open-vm-tools in Fedora. 
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/open-vm-tools

open-vm-tools provides significant functionality for VM management 
and helps in anything that requires co-ordination with the guest.

open-vm-tools package provides a sub-package open-vm-tools-desktop. 
open-vm-tools-desktop is a very small package and provides integration 
of VM's desktop UI with host UI or remote client UI. It is essential for 
improved user experience of the VM UI, e.g. things like copy/paste, 
proper VM UI screen resolution. This package spawns a process on 
each user login (the process is stopped during logout). The process exits 
gracefully if the desktop is not running on a VMware VM.

I would like to include open-vm-tools-desktop package as part of most 
of the desktop package groups in Fedora by default. Could you please 
help me with the process to make the necessary changes?

FYI, I'm working with Fedora group to include open-vm-tools as part 
of @standard group.

Thanks, 
Ravindra

[Adam Williamson]

On Tue, 2013-05-07 at 12:17 -0700, Ravindra Kumar wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Currently, I'm maintaining open-vm-tools in Fedora.
>
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/open-vm-tools
>
> open-vm-tools provides significant functionality for VM management
> and helps in anything that requires co-ordination with the guest.
>
> open-vm-tools package provides a sub-package open-vm-tools-desktop.
> open-vm-tools-desktop is a very small package and provides integration
> of VM's desktop UI with host UI or remote client UI. It is essential
> for
> improved user experience of the VM UI, e.g. things like copy/paste,
> proper VM UI screen resolution. This package spawns a process on
> each user login (the process is stopped during logout). The process
> exits
> gracefully if the desktop is not running on a VMware VM.
>
> I would like to include open-vm-tools-desktop package as part of most
> of the desktop package groups in Fedora by default. Could you please
>
> help me with the process to make the necessary changes?
>
> FYI, I'm working with Fedora group to include open-vm-tools as part
> of @standard group.

It might be better to see if it can be added to @base-x , so all the
desktops would inherit it without having to list it specifically?

[Jóhann B. Guðmundsson]

On 05/13/2013 06:55 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Tue, 2013-05-07 at 12:17 -0700, Ravindra Kumar wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Currently, I'm maintaining open-vm-tools in Fedora.
> >
> > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/open-vm-tools
> >
> > open-vm-tools provides significant functionality for VM management
> > and helps in anything that requires co-ordination with the guest.
> >
> > open-vm-tools package provides a sub-package open-vm-tools-desktop.
> > open-vm-tools-desktop is a very small package and provides integration
> > of VM's desktop UI with host UI or remote client UI. It is essential
> > for
> > improved user experience of the VM UI, e.g. things like copy/paste,
> > proper VM UI screen resolution. This package spawns a process on
> > each user login (the process is stopped during logout). The process
> > exits
> > gracefully if the desktop is not running on a VMware VM.
> >
> > I would like to include open-vm-tools-desktop package as part of most
> > of the desktop package groups in Fedora by default. Could you please
> >
> > help me with the process to make the necessary changes?
> >
> > FYI, I'm working with Fedora group to include open-vm-tools as part
> > of @standard group.
>
> It might be better to see if it can be added to @base-x , so all the
> desktops would inherit it without having to list it specifically?

Keep all the vm stuff in a vm comps group so it can be filtered out on 
bare metal installs + that stuff should not be default on live iso ( as 
seem to be the case with Gnome which seem pull in qemu/kvm probably via 
virt-manager or boxee )

JBG

[Adam Williamson]

On Mon, 2013-05-13 at 19:42 +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
> that stuff should not be default on live iso ( as
>
> seem to be the case with Gnome which seem pull in qemu/kvm probably via 
> virt-manager or boxee )

spice-vdagent is explicitly listed in base-x in comps, so it is in all
default images and installs. The desktop spin does indeed have qemu/kvm
as a dependency of Boxes, and that is intentional, it is considered to
be a normal part of GNOME that should be included in a default desktop.

[Peter Robinson]

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 9:02 PM, Adam Williamson  wrote:
> On Mon, 2013-05-13 at 19:42 +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
> > that stuff should not be default on live iso ( as
> >
> > seem to be the case with Gnome which seem pull in qemu/kvm probably via
> > virt-manager or boxee )
>
> spice-vdagent is explicitly listed in base-x in comps, so it is in all
> default images and installs. The desktop spin does indeed have qemu/kvm
> as a dependency of Boxes, and that is intentional, it is considered to
> be a normal part of GNOME that should be included in a default desktop.

But the ovirt-guest-agent* which is the ovirt agent(s) aren't
installed by default, I think ultimately spice-vdagent was put there
by the maintainer and likely shouldn't be there by default.

Peter

[Adam Williamson]

On Mon, 2013-05-13 at 21:05 +0100, Peter Robinson wrote:
> On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 9:02 PM, Adam Williamson  wrote:
> > On Mon, 2013-05-13 at 19:42 +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
> > > that stuff should not be default on live iso ( as
> > >
> > > seem to be the case with Gnome which seem pull in qemu/kvm probably via
> > > virt-manager or boxee )
> >
> > spice-vdagent is explicitly listed in base-x in comps, so it is in all
> > default images and installs. The desktop spin does indeed have qemu/kvm
> > as a dependency of Boxes, and that is intentional, it is considered to
> > be a normal part of GNOME that should be included in a default desktop.
>
> But the ovirt-guest-agent* which is the ovirt agent(s) aren't
> installed by default, I think ultimately spice-vdagent was put there
> by the maintainer and likely shouldn't be there by default.

I think all you can say is that the behaviour isn't consistent between
different virt agent-type packages. comps appears to be in the process
of fixing that, though.

[Jóhann B. Guðmundsson]

On 05/13/2013 08:02 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Mon, 2013-05-13 at 19:42 +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
> > that stuff should not be default on live iso ( as
> >
> > seem to be the case with Gnome which seem pull in qemu/kvm probably via
> > virt-manager or boxee )
>
> spice-vdagent is explicitly listed in base-x in comps, so it is in all
> default images and installs. The desktop spin does indeed have qemu/kvm
> as a dependency of Boxes, and that is intentional, it is considered to
> be a normal part of GNOME that should be included in a default desktop.

The problem being that not all cpu's are equal and there is alot of hw 
out there which is not virtualzation capable so not only do we install 
qemu/kvm on those boxes but also *enable* it for majority of users that 
do not have a clue what it is nor will ever come to use it...

JBG