Proposal for a new disk configuration utility

[Henning Sprang]

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?
> 

I'd defintely like to have the same disk config file for a xen vm. The 
only difference in this case is that you don't need partioning, which 
should be diabled by some configuration directive in the disk config file.
Then I'd like to define the scheme of disks and mountpoints to be used 
in a xen vm in the same style as for all my other hosts.

Using hooks is possible but forces users to write a shell script with 
the collected mkfs commands for each vm.

The first thing I would do if we don't have a universal config file 
would be to create a simple file format where I write only my dev / 
mountpoint mapping which is read from the extrbase.XENU hook, so I don't 
have to repeatedly write mkfs command lines manually. Admittedly, as I 
am starting to install xen vm's now/yesterday I'll do that anyway, but 
be happy to switch to the universal format when available.

Henning