vkernel manager

[Aggelos Economopoulos]

On Saturday 09 February 2008, Nuno Antunes wrote:
> On Feb 9, 2008 7:04 AM, Aggelos Economopoulos <aoiko at cc.ece.ntua.gr> wrote:
[...]
> > Hopefully this will be useful to someone.
> 
> Yah, this looks nice. Maybe this should go in somewhere
> (/usr/src/tools?). Although I see the value of this script, I tend to
> use the same rootimg and vkernel binary with different arguments each
> time depending on the scenario I'm trying to build. I also often copy
> the rootimg files around to create an instant replica of the virtual
> machine.

To use the same vkernel + diskimage in different scenarios with this script,
all you need to do would be to have different configuration files in
. vkernel/ that specify different arguments to the vkernel (this requires a
kernel_args configuration variable, trivial to implement). Also trivial
would be to make the script keep different vkernels from using the same
diskimage at the same time.

As for copying diskimages around, we need cow vkds, which you should feel
free to add :) If you do, please make them compatible to some existing
virtual disk format.

> To create the rootimgs, I use a (rudimentary) script which is
> basically just a rip-off from the instructions on the vkernel manpage.
> 
[...]
> Its only mandatory argument is the name of the rootimg, with an
> optional argument for its size. If the size is not specified, then it
> defaults to 1Gb in order to accommodate a full instalworld with debug
> symbols.
> 
> This is still very rudimentary and could use more arguments
> validation. I thought that something like this could be used by some
> additional target in /usr/src/Makefile. Something like:
> make buildrootimg ROOTIMG=/var/vkernel/rootimg.01 ROOTIMGSIZE=512m
> But don't have a formal proposal for it so I never brought it up.
> Another use of such a target would be to create a disk image for
> dd'ing into a compact flash for embedded applications or so.

Yeah, that would work and may be better than providing a buildrootimage
script like yours above.

Aggelos