libguestfs/dib/virt-dib.pod

=head1 NAME

virt-dib - Run diskimage-builder elements

=head1 SYNOPSIS

 virt-dib -B DIB-LIB [options] elements...

=head1 DESCRIPTION

Virt-dib is a tool for using the elements of C<diskimage-builder>
to build a new disk image, generate new ramdisks, etc.

Virt-dib is intended as safe replacement for C<diskimage-builder>
and its C<ramdisk-image-create> mode, see
L</COMPARISON WITH DISKIMAGE-BUILDER> for a quick comparison with
usage of C<diskimage-builder>.

C<diskimage-builder> is part of the TripleO OpenStack project:
L<https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/TripleO>.

=head1 EXAMPLES

=head2 Build simple images of distributions

 virt-dib \
   -B /path/to/diskimage-builder/lib \
   -p /path/to/diskimage-builder/elements \
   --envvar DIB_RELEASE=jessie \
   --name debian-jessie \
   debian vm

This builds a Debian Jessie (8.x) disk image, suitable for running
as virtual machine, saved as F<debian-jessie.qcow2>.

=head2 Build ramdisks

 virt-dib \
   -B /path/to/diskimage-builder/lib \
   -p /path/to/diskimage-builder/elements \
   --ramdisk \
   --name ramdisk \
   ubuntu deploy-ironic

This builds a ramdisk for the Ironic OpenStack component based
on the Ubuntu distribution.

=head1 OPTIONS

=over 4

=item B<--help>

Display help.

=item B<-B> PATH

Set the path to the library directory of C<diskimage-builder>. This is
usually the F<lib> subdirectory in the sources and when installed,
and F</usr/share/diskimage-builder/lib> when installed in F</usr>.

This parameter is B<mandatory>, as virt-dib needs to provide it for
the elements (as some of them might use scripts in it).
Virt-dib itself does not make use of the library directory.

=item B<--arch> ARCHITECTURE

Use the specified architecture for the output image.  The default
value is the same as the host running virt-dib.

Right now this option does nothing more than setting the C<ARCH>
environment variable for the elements, and it’s up to them to
produce an image for the requested architecture.

=item B<--checksum>

Generate checksum files for the generated image.  The supported
checksums are MD5, and SHA256.

=item B<--colors>

=item B<--colours>

Use ANSI colour sequences to colourize messages.  This is the default
when the output is a tty.  If the output of the program is redirected
to a file, ANSI colour sequences are disabled unless you use this
option.

=item B<--debug> LEVEL

Set the debug level to C<LEVEL>, which is a non-negative integer
number.  The default is C<0>.

This debug level is different than what I<-x> and I<-v> set,
and it increases the debugging information printed out.
Specifically, this sets the C<DIB_DEBUG_TRACE>, and any value
E<gt> C<0> enables tracing in the scripts executed.

=item B<--docker-target> TARGET

Set the repository and tag for docker.

This is used only when the formats include C<docker>, and it is
required in that case.

=item B<--drive> DISK

Add the specified disk to be used as helper drive where to cache
files of the elements, like disk images, distribution packages, etc.

See L</HELPER DRIVE>.

=item B<--drive-format> raw

=item B<--drive-format> qcow2

Specify the format of the helper drive.  If this flag is not given
then it is auto-detected from the drive itself.

If working with untrusted raw-format guest disk images, you should
ensure the format is always specified.

This option is used only if I<--drive> is specified.

See L</HELPER DRIVE>.

=item B<-p> PATH

=item B<--element-path> PATH

Add a new path with elements.  Paths are used in the same order as the
I<-p> parameters appear, so a path specified first is looked first,
and so on.

Obviously, it is recommended to add the path to the own elements of
C<diskimage-builder>, as most of the other elements will rely on them.

=item B<--extra-packages> PACKAGE,...

Install additional packages in the image being built.

This relies on the C<install-packages> binary provided by the
package management elements.

This option can be specified multiple times, each time with multiple
packages separated by comma.

=item B<--envvar> VARIABLE

=item B<--envvar> VARIABLE=VALUE

Carry or set an environment variable for the elements.

See L</ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES> below for more information on the
interaction and usage of environment variables.

This option can be used in two ways:

=over 4

=item B<--envvar> VARIABLE

Carry the environment variable C<VARIABLE>. If it is not set, nothing
is exported to the elements.

=item B<--envvar> VARIABLE=VALUE

Set the environment variable C<VARIABLE> with value C<VALUE> for the
elements, regardless whether an environment variable with the same
name exists.

This can be useful to pass environment variable without exporting
them in the environment where virt-dib runs.

=back

=item B<--exclude-element> ELEMENT

Ignore the specified element.

=item B<--exclude-script> SCRIPT

Ignore any element script named C<SCRIPT>, whichever element it is in.

This can be useful in case some script does not run well with
virt-dib, for example when they really need C<diskimage-builder>'s
environment.

=item B<--formats> FORMAT,...

Set the list of output formats, separating them with comma.

Supported formats are:

=over 4

=item C<docker>

Import the image to docker, running B<docker import>.  The target for
the image B<must> be specified using I<--docker-target>.

Please note this operation usually requires the docker service to be
enabled, otherwise it will fail.  Furthermore, B<docker> is run using
L<sudo(8)>, so make sure the user has the permissions to run at least
B<docker>.

=item C<qcow2> (enabled by default)

QEMU’s qcow2.  This output format requires the C<qemu-img> tool.

=item C<raw>

Raw disk format.

=item C<squashfs>

An squashfs filesystem, compressed with XZ.  This output format
requires the C<squashfs> feature; see also
L<guestfs(3)/AVAILABILITY>.

=item C<tar>

An uncompressed tarball.

=item C<tgz>

A tarball compressed with gzip.

=item C<vhd>

C<Virtual Hard Disk> disk image.  This output format requires
the C<vhd-util> tool.

Please note that the version of C<vhd-util> tool needs to be patched
to support the C<convert> subcommand, and to be bootable.
The patch is available here:
L<https://github.com/emonty/vhd-util/blob/master/debian/patches/citrix>.

=back

=item B<--fs-type> FILESYSTEM

Set the filesystem type to use for the root filesystem.  The default
is C<ext4>.

See also L<guestfs(3)/guestfs_filesystem_available>.

=item B<--image-cache> DIRECTORY

Set the path in the host where cache the resources used by the
elements of the C<extra-data.d> phase.  The default is
F<~/.cache/image-create>.

Please note that most of the resources fetched in phases other than
C<extra-data.d> will be cached in the helper drive specified with
I<--drive>; see also L</HELPER DRIVE>.

=item B<--install-type> TYPE

Specify the default installation type.  Defaults to C<source>.

Set to C<package> to use package based installations by default.

=item B<--machine-readable>

=item B<--machine-readable>=format

This option is used to make the output more machine friendly
when being parsed by other programs.  See
L</MACHINE READABLE OUTPUT> below.

=item B<-m> MB

=item B<--memsize> MB

Change the amount of memory allocated to the appliance. Increase
this if you find that the virt-dib execution runs out of memory.

The default can be found with this command:

 guestfish get-memsize

=item B<--mkfs-options> C<OPTION STRING>

Add the specified options to L<mkfs(1)>, to be able to fine-tune
the root filesystem creation; the options are passed to the driver
of L<mfks(1)>, and not to L<mfks(1)> itself.  Note that
I<--fs-type> is used to change the filesystem type.

You should use I<--mkfs-options> at most once.  To pass multiple
options, separate them with space, eg:

 virt-dib ... --mkfs-options '-O someopt -I foo'

=item B<--network>

=item B<--no-network>

Enable or disable network access from the guest during the
installation.

Enabled is the default.  Use I<--no-network> to disable access.

The network only allows outgoing connections and has other minor
limitations.  See L<virt-rescue(1)/NETWORK>.

This does not affect whether the guest can access the network once it
has been booted, because that is controlled by your hypervisor or
cloud environment and has nothing to do with virt-dib.

If you use I<--no-network>, then the environment variable
C<DIB_OFFLINE> is set to C<1>, signaling the elements that they
should use only cached resources when available.  Note also that,
unlike with C<diskimage-builder> where elements may still be able
to access to the network even with C<DIB_OFFLINE=>, under virt-dib
network will not be accessible at all.

=item B<--name> NAME

Set the name of the output image file.  The default is C<image>.

According to the chosen name, there will be the following in the
current directory:

=over 4

=item F<$NAME.ext>

For each output format, a file named after the output image
with the extension depending on the format; for example:
F<$NAME.qcow2>, F<$NAME.raw>, etc.

Not applicable in ramdisk mode, see L</RAMDISK BUILDING>.

=item F<$NAME.d>

A directory containing any files created by the elements, for example
F<dib-manifests> directory (created by the C<manifests> element),
ramdisks and kernels in ramdisk mode, and so on.

=item F<$NAME.ext.checksum>

When I<--checksum> is specified, there will be files for each
supported checksum type; for example: F<$NAME.ext.md5>,
F<$NAME.ext.sha256>, etc.

Not applicable in ramdisk mode, see L</RAMDISK BUILDING>.

=back

=item B<--no-delete-on-failure>

Don’t delete the output files on failure to build.  You can use this
to debug failures to run scripts.

The default is to delete the output files if virt-dib fails (or,
for example, some script that it runs fails).

=item B<--python> PYTHON

Specify a different Python interpreter to use.  Parts of
C<diskimage-builder> are implemented in Python, and thus an
interpreter is needed.

C<PYTHON> can either be an executable filename (e.g. F<python2>,
which is then searched in C<$PATH>), or a full path (e.g.
F</usr/bin/python2>).  If not specified, the default value is
F<python>.

=item B<-q>

=item B<--quiet>

Don’t print ordinary progress messages.

=item B<--qemu-img-options> option[,option,...]

Pass I<--qemu-img-options> option(s) to the L<qemu-img(1)> command
to fine-tune the output format.  Options available depend on
the output format (see I<--formats>) and the installed version
of the qemu-img program.

You should use I<--qemu-img-options> at most once.  To pass multiple
options, separate them with commas, eg:

 virt-dib ... --qemu-img-options cluster_size=512,preallocation=metadata ...

=item B<--ramdisk>

Set the ramdisk building mode.

See L</RAMDISK BUILDING>.

=item B<--ramdisk-element> NAME

Set the name for the additional element added in ramdisk building
mode.  The default is C<ramdisk>.

See L</RAMDISK BUILDING>.

=item B<--root-label> LABEL

Set the label for the root filesystem in the created image.

Please note that some filesystems have different restrictions on
the length of their labels; for example, on C<ext2/3/4> filesystems
labels cannot be longer than 16 characters, while on C<xfs> they have
at most 12 characters.

The default depends on the actual filesystem for the root partition
(see I<--fs-type>): on C<xfs> is C<img-rootfs>, while
C<cloudimg-rootfs> on any other filesystem.

=item B<--size> SIZE

Select the size of the output disk, where the size can be specified
using common names such as C<32G> (32 gigabytes) etc.
The default size is C<5G>.

To specify size in bytes, the number must be followed by the lowercase
letter I<b>, eg: S<C<--size 10737418240b>>.

See also L<virt-resize(1)> for resizing partitions of an existing
disk image.

=item B<--skip-base>

Skip the inclusion of the C<base> element.

=item B<--smp> N

Enable N E<ge> 2 virtual CPUs for scripts to use.

=item B<-u>

Do not compress resulting qcow2 images.  The default is to compress
them.

=item B<-v>

=item B<--verbose>

Enable debugging messages.

=item B<-V>

=item B<--version>

Display version number and exit.

=item B<-x>

Enable tracing of libguestfs API calls.

=back

=head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

Unlike with C<diskimage-builder>, the environment of the host is
B<not> inherited in the appliance when running most of the elements
(i.e. all except the ones in the C<extra-data.d> phase).

To set environment for the elements being run, it is necessary to tell
virt-dib to use them, with the option I<--envvar>.  Such option
allows to selectively export environment variables when running the
elements, and it is the preferred way to pass environment variables
to the elements.

To recap: if you want the environment variable C<MYVAR>
(and its content) to be available to the elements, you can do either

 export MYVAR   # whichever is its value
 virt-dib ... --envvar MYVAR ...

or

 virt-dib ... --envvar MYVAR=value_of_it ...

=head1 HELPER DRIVE

Virt-dib runs most of the element in its own appliance, and thus not
on the host.  Because of this, there is no possibility for elements
to cache resources directly on the host.

To solve this issue, virt-dib allows the usage of an helper drive
where to store cached resources, like disk images,
distribution packages, etc. While this means that there is a smaller
space available for caching, at least it allows to limit the space
on the host for caches, without assuming that elements will do that
by themselves.

Currently this disk is either required to have a single partition
on it, or the first partition on it will be used.  A disk with
the latter configuration can be easily created with L<guestfish(1)>
like the following:

 guestfish -N filename.img=fs:ext4:10G exit

The above will create a disk image called F<filename.img>, 10G big,
with a single partition of type ext4;
see L<guestfish(1)/PREPARED DISK IMAGES>.

It is recommended for it to be E<ge> 10G or even more, as elements
will cache disk images, distribution packages, etc.  As with any disk
image, the helper disk can be easily resized using L<virt-resize(1)>
if more space in it is needed.

The drive can be accessed like any other disk image, for example using
other tools of libguestfs such as L<guestfish(1)>:

 guestfish -a filename.img -m /dev/sda1

If no helper drive is specified with I<--drive>, all the resources
cached during a virt-dib run will be discarded.

=head2 RESOURCES INSIDE THE DRIVE

Inside the helper drive, it is possible to find the following
resources:

=over 4

=item F</home>

This directory is set as C<HOME> environment variable during the
build.  It contains mostly the image cache (saved as
F</home/.cache/image-create>), and whichever other resource is
cached in the home directory of the user running the various tools.

=item F</virt-dib-*.log>

These are the logs of the elements being run within the libguestfs
appliance, which means all the phases except C<extra-data.d>.

=back

=head1 RAMDISK BUILDING

Virt-dib can emulate also C<ramdisk-image-create>, which is a
secondary operation mode of C<diskimage-builder>.  Instead of being
a different tool name, virt-dib provides easy access to this mode
using the I<--ramdisk> switch.

In this mode:

=over 4

=item

there is an additional ramdisk element added (see
I<--ramdisk-element>)

=item

no image is produced (so I<--formats> is ignored)

=item

F<$NAME.d> (see I<--name>) will contain initrd, kernel, etc

=back

=head1 TEMPORARY DIRECTORY

Virt-dib uses the standard temporary directory used by libguestfs,
see L<guestfs(3)/ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES>.

By default this location is F</tmp> (default value for C<TMPDIR>),
which on some systems may be on a tmpfs filesystem, and thus
defaulting to a maximum size of I<half> of physical RAM.
If virt-dib exceeds this, it may hang or exit early with an error.
The solution is to point C<TMPDIR> to a permanent location used
as temporary location, for example:

 mkdir local-tmp
 env TMPDIR=$PWD/local-tmp virt-dib ...
 rm -rf local-tmp

=head1 EXTRA DEPENDENCIES

Because of virt-dib runs most of the elements in its own appliance,
all the tools and libraries used by elements running outside the
guest (typically C<root.d>, C<block-device.d>, and C<cleanup.d>)
need to be present in the appliance as well.  In case they
are not, scripts will fail typically with a C<command not found>
error.

For tools and libraries packaged by the distribution, the easy
solution is to tell libguestfs to include additional packages in the
appliance.  This is doable by e.g. creating a new file with the
additional packages:

 # echo wget > /usr/lib64/guestfs/supermin.d/dib-my-extra

The actual path to the F<supermin.d> directory depends on the
distribution; additional files can list more packages, each in
its own line.  For more details, see L<supermin(1)>.

=head1 COMPARISON WITH DISKIMAGE-BUILDER

Virt-dib is intended as safe replacement for C<diskimage-builder>
and its C<ramdisk-image-create> mode; the user-notable differences
consist in:

=over 4

=item

the command line arguments; some of the arguments are the same as
available in C<diskimage-builder>, while some have different names:

 disk-image-create             virt-dib
 -----------------             --------
 -a ARCH                       --arch ARCH
 --image-size SIZE             --size SIZE
 --max-online-resize SIZE      doable using --mkfs-options
 -n                            --skip-base
 -o IMAGENAME                  --name IMAGENAME
 -p PACKAGE(S)                 --extra-packages PACKAGE(S)
 -t FORMAT(S)                  --formats FORMAT(S)
 -x                            --debug 1
 -x -x                         --debug 2
 -x -x [-x ...]                --debug 3/4/etc

=item

the location of non-image output files (like ramdisks and kernels)

=item

the way some of the cached resources are saved: using an helper drive,
not directly on the disk where virt-dib is run

=item

the need to specify a target size for the output disk, as opposed
to C<diskimage-builder> calculating an optimal one

=item

the handling of environment variables, see L</ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES>.

Furthermore, other than the libguestfs own environment variables
(see L<guestfs(3)/ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES>), virt-dib does not read
any other environment variable: this means that all the options
and behaviour changes are specified solely using command line
arguments

=item

extra tools needed on some out-of-chroot phases need to be available
in the appliance, see L</EXTRA DEPENDENCIES>.

=back

Elements themselves should notice no difference in they way
they are run; behaviour differences may due to wrong assumptions in
elements, or not correct virt-dib emulation.

Known issues at the moment:

=over 4

=item

(none)

=back

=head1 MACHINE READABLE OUTPUT

The I<--machine-readable> option can be used to make the output more
machine friendly, which is useful when calling virt-dib from other
programs, GUIs etc.

Use the option on its own to query the capabilities of the
virt-dib binary.  Typical output looks like this:

 $ virt-dib --machine-readable
 virt-dib
 output:qcow2
 output:tar
 output:raw
 output:vhd

A list of features is printed, one per line, and the program exits
with status 0.

The C<output:> features refer to the output formats (I<--formats>
command line option) supported by this binary.

It is possible to specify a format string for controlling the output;
see L<guestfs(3)/ADVANCED MACHINE READABLE OUTPUT>.

=head1 TESTING

Virt-dib has been tested with C<diskimage-builder> (and its elements)
E<ge> 0.1.43; from time to time also with C<tripleo-image-elements>
and C<sahara-image-elements>.

Previous versions may work, but it is not guaranteed.

=head1 EXIT STATUS

This program returns 0 if successful, or non-zero if there was an
error.

=head1 SEE ALSO

L<guestfs(3)>,
L<guestfish(1)>,
L<virt-resize(1)>,
L<http://libguestfs.org/>.

=head1 AUTHOR

Pino Toscano (C<ptoscano at redhat dot com>)

=head1 COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2015 Red Hat Inc.