removing NetworkManager from cloud image?

[David Nalley]

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Matthew Miller
<mattdm at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 01:41:31PM -0400, Andy Grimm wrote:
>> This feels like https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=693602 all
>> over again (the debate about whether to make "minimal" installs
>> include NM or to make sure that the network service starts correctly
>> when NM is absent).  I am no fan of NM, but I think the memory
>
> It's basically the same, but we have a different use case than a _generic_
> minimum install. I repeatedly hear that the base Fedora cloud image should
> contain as little as possible

Where are you hearing this from? And who is saying this? Cloud
Providers? Users with one or two instances? massive deployments
(thousands of VMs)?

, and this is an attempt to move in that
> direction. I know it's not a huge amount overall, but I also don't see much
> cost to doing it. The big changes are going to take a lot of work, so
> there's also value in hitting the various smaller ones for a cumulative
> improvment.

At least one additional cost comes in the form of QA - we can be
relatively certain that if NM works in a VM it will work in our cloud
image.

>
>> consumption angle is a weak argument (the RSS for NM on my system is
>> 4MB right now -- that's less than 1% of the RAM of the smallest
>> instance type in EC2), [...]
>
> 1% saved is 1% earned. :) We're not just targetting EC2, and many
> local/private cloud providers would like to use smaller images. In my
> experience, memory is easily the first limit hit in virtualization.

Which local/private cloud providers?
Everyone I know that has anything close-to-recent Fedora images is
building their own. (I am really surprised at the amount of use
Boxgrinder is getting for just that thing, in places so large that I
wouldn't expect it.)  My inference is that Amazon (corporately) is
just so large that they don't really care (anymore) whether there is a
Fedora image or not, and since Fedora 8 they really haven't gone
through the hoops to get it there. Every other cloud provider that has
Fedora has done the work on their own, and typically has custom bits
they add to their image, or custom configuration, so that a Fedora
produced image isn't going to be what they deploy.

>
>> [...] and since the decision as far as I'm aware is
>> that "minimal" installs now contain NM, we should go along with that.
>
> Well, from the bug: "You'll still be able to install without NM via a
> kickstart if you really must." That's what I'm proposing, not blocking NM
> from Cloud entirely. (Which would be silly.)
>
>>  Wherever NM causes a problem, it should be treated as an NM bug and
>> fixed, not used as an excuse to deviate for the standard distro
>> install.
>
> Splitting off more of the dependencies, (for example
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=809098) would also help and be
> progress forward for everyone. Likewise, it'd be great to see a "run once"
> mode for NetworkManager so it doesn't need to just sit there basically doing
> nothing in the cases where its more advanced features aren't needed:
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=863515
>
>