Building Images for Taskotron Disposable Clients

[Tim Flink]

On Mon, 9 Nov 2015 22:02:35 -0700
Tim Flink <tflink at redhat.com> wrote:

> As we get closer to putting disposable clients into production, we
> need a way to have updated images for those clients. I don't think
> this is news to anyone since the topic has come up several times
> before but now there's a bit more urgency :)
> 
> In my mind, we have the following requirements:
>  - Produces qcow2 images that work with testcloud
>  - can be run in an automated way
>  - allows adding/changing/customizing packages contained in image
>  - allows arbitrary repos to be specified
> 
> and the following "nice to have" things:
>  - can build branched and rawhide images
>  - builds images from scratch using only things provided by releng
>  - written in python
>  - builds more than qcow2 for some future-proofing
>  - can run well in a VM
> 
> Is there anything that I missed?
> 
> As far as I know, we're looking at two options right now:
> taskotron-vmbuilder and imagefactory. I've put together a list of
> the pros and cons that I know of for both tools. Thoughts on which
> direction to take would be appreciated.

After talking with adam more about how openqa works, it turns out that
there is a significant overlap between what we need for taskotron
images and the installed images that openqa uses for some of its tests.

From what I can see, it would make sense to have one tool which is
capable of creating images for both system. I'm not sure it makes sense
to support non-installed image creation (ks, update, shrink and the
other bare disks), though.

I'll add on what I can think of for what I can see in the openqa image
creation but more feedback from the folks who've dealt with it more
than I have would be appreciated.

Requirements:
  - make post-install changes to the images before distribution
  - specify partition table type
  - create users on the image

Are there other requirements for openqa images? Any thoughts on whether
it makes sense to look into doing both images in the same place?

Tim
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