Proposal for a new disk configuration utility

[Sam Vilain]

Michael Tautschnig wrote:

>>Hello,
>>I have a question about supporting Xen. Can you write a sample configuration
>>for Xen where exists device /dev/hda1 for root filesystem but not
>>exists /dev/hda?
>>I need create configuration files and variables without partitioning
>>disks. Is it possible in new disk configuration utility?
>>
>>    
>>
>
>I didn't consider Xen in the context of disk_config yet as I'm using (very
>simple) hooks for my domains. 
>
>Actually I doubt that it is useful to consider such things here, I'd rather
>suggest some (more intelligent) example hook. Any other opinions on this issue?
>
>Thanks,
>Michael
>  
>

I guess the only thing it would be doing in this case is mkfs and
setting up the fstab.

Perhaps this should be possible by allowing the disk_config program to
skip stages with commandline options, and then relevant glue can be made
as required.  And that way, you don't need to modify your disk config
table for building Xen domains.  It can be either degenerate, just
specifying the things the disk_config program needs to know to format
and mount, or it can be complete, allowing a real server build to be
prototyped using Xen.

In fact, if the disk_config program was capable of reading the table,
being passed in a list of disks (instead of running the detect phase)
and outputting what it is going to do, it would;

a) allow the script to have a regression suite built for it, easily

b) allow for integration scripts here to do the "external" configuration
(such as making the Xen harddisk file, or in the vserver case, setting
up filesystems and mounts) based on the single FAI configuration.

Sam.