Re: [Xen-API] What is XCP iso 'under-the-hood'?

[Mike McClurg <mike.mcclurg@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 13/12/12 09:41, Andreas Hilboll wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to decide if I want to use the XCP iso or go via xcp-xapi on
> Ubuntu 12.04. Right now I cannot decide because I couldn't find out what
> XCP actually *is* under the hood. In the wiki it says that the iso is
> build on a Centos5 kernel, but what about the rest? I mean, is it
> actually a CentOS Linux with XCP on top? Or what else?
> 
> I'm asking because I want to be able to do some stuff in the dom0:
> 
> * hardware-RAID monitoring (areca)
> * snapshot a running system and rsync the data to a remote location
> * handle configuration parameters via Puppet
> * ...
> 
> So if XCP iso is actually a CentOS, I should be able to do this. If not
> -- I don't know?
> 
> Any insight is greatly appreciated!
> 
> Cheers, Andreas.

Hi Andreas,

It's true that XCP 1.6 is based on CentOS 5.7. However, XCP is a highly
customized version of CentOS, and should really be thought of as a
standalone Linux distribution, and not just some apps built on top of
CentOS. For instance, while it is possible to install software in XCP
via yum, it is not encouraged to do so, as running a command like 'yum
upgrade' would overwrite important custom software, like LVM.

Basically, the XCP iso is meant to be treated as a "black box" style
appliance which isn't supposed to be mucked about with (unless you know
what you're doing!). If you're willing to play around with getting
Puppet to work with XCP, I would be ever grateful to you for writing up
a HOWTO on the wiki. But I expect you might need to do a bit of
tinkering, because XCP won't act like your standard CentOS install.

The XCP toolstack packages (xcp-xapi and its dependencies) were meant to
serve the purpose of a hackable installation of XCP. Unfortunately, the
current state of XCP toolstack packages is not where we'd like them to
be. The code in the current release is a snapshot from somewhere
directly after the 1.5 beta was released, and hasn't been updated yet.
We're planning on getting snapshots from the 1.6 branch up and running
soon, but it probably won't happen until around March next year.

So, give them both a try and see if they suit your needs. Hope this helps!

Mike

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