Everything is a Freaking DNS problem - xen

Converting KVM to VirtualBox

Kris Buytaert — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 22:01:57 +0000

I have had most of my test environment, aka puppetmasters, test mysql setups etc running in KVM for the past couple of years .. (yes I`m still using a lot of Xen in production environments, but we've also been using KVM for a while already .. it's a good mix) , Virtual box has always been the lesser loved Virtualization platform , however while playing more and more with Vagrant Up I realized I needed to convirt some boxen (e.g my PuppetMaster) to Virtualbox, and google was really no good help(most people seem to go the other way , or want to use some proprietary tools )

So I remembered VBoxManage and apparently I hade blogged about it myselve already ..
I just hate it when I search for stuff and google points right back to me

So I converted my puppetmaster's disks

VBoxManage convertdd Emtpy-clone.img  PuppetMasterroot.vdi
VBoxManage convertdd puppet-var.img  PuppetMastervar.vdi

Now when booting the VM in Virtualbox , obviously the kernel panicked .. as my KVM disks are recognised as as /dev/hda and and Virtualbox defaults to /dev/sda and LVM doesn't really like disks to be on another names
No commandline fu here to help me, but using the VirtualBox gui to move the disks to the IDE controller rather than the SATA controller.

Now all I need to do is wait for some smart guy who comments that you probably could use VBoxManage storagectl to achieve the same goal :)

And wait till Vagrant Up start supporting KVM , so I can move back :)

Puppet broke my Xen

Kris Buytaert — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 14:35:01 +0000

Actually it didn't , but now I got your attention.
We just adopted the use of adding headers to all of our files that are managed by puppet so people will know not to touch it

  file {
                "/etc/xen/scripts/network-custom-vlan-bridges":
                        owner => "root",
                        group => "root",
                        mode => "0755",
                        content => template(
                                "headers/header-hash.erb',
                                "xen/co-mmx-network-custom-vlan-bridges.erb");
        }

All worked nice however upon bootstrapping our Xen host the bridges stopped working .. running the network-custom-vlan-bridges script manually solved everything and created the appropriate bridges. But at boottime it didn't..

I added some debug info to the script and figured it never got executed at boot time.

Turns out that when I removed the headers Xen actually does configure the bridges at boot time, Xen probably checks for a shebang at the beginning of the file.

Putting the header at the end of the file therefore solved the problem. ,

Building Virtual Appliances

Kris Buytaert — Thu, 27 May 2010 08:03:29 +0000

Johan from Sizing Servers asked me if I could talk about my experiences on building (virtual) appliances at their Advanced Virtualization and Hybrid Cloud seminar . Off course I said yes ..

Slides are below ... Enjoy ..

Building appliances

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Disabling DHCP on a LibVirt setup

Kris Buytaert — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:43:27 +0000

So you have this libvirt setup and you want to have a dhcp server on the virtual machines you are playing with , or you want to have all static IP's.

Libvirt uses dnsmasq to provide dhcp services etc and when you generate a config from the gui it will look like

<network>
  <name>piponet</name>
  <uuid>e87d3bf1-a2e7-96ca-e131-7ae51ac033f9</uuid>
  <bridge name='virbr2' stp='on' delay='0' />
  <ip address='192.168.100.1' netmask='255.255.255.0'>
    <dhcp>
      <range start='192.168.100.128' end='192.168.100.254' />
    </dhcp>
  </ip>
</network>

If you fully remove the dhcp section, then restart libvirt you'll notice dnsmasq running with no dhcpd on that subnet so you'll have full control again :)

<network>
  <name>piponet</name>
  <uuid>e87d3bf1-a2e7-96ca-e131-7ae51ac033f9</uuid>
  <bridge name='virbr2' stp='on' delay='0' />
  <ip address='192.168.100.1' netmask='255.255.255.0'>
     </ip>
</network>

Got Interviewed

Kris Buytaert — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:05:47 +0000

by @botchagalupe
on Virtualization, Open Source tools and DNS Problems

KVM or Xen

Kris Buytaert — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:47:17 +0000

Over at Virtualization.com I asked the crowd what they planned to do when RedHat plans on finally migrating from Xen to KVM .. you can have your say too . :

Upcoming Training opportunities

Kris Buytaert — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:45:57 +0000

Next month I`ll be teaching a course on Virtualization at the KULAK.

Apart from my training there is also a Puppet training planned in Belgium.

As I assisted Luke in finding a location for the training I tought it might be a good idea to have a Puppet Users meetup while some people are already gathering in Leuven

Current plan is to meet up somewhere in Leuven on the evening of the 25th , more announcements later ..

CloudCamp Antwerp

Kris Buytaert — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:21:53 +0000

So yesterday a 100+ crowd met in the Antwerp Zoo.
I heard different comments from that crowd... some of them liked the event, good networking, interresting topics , a broad overview, meeting new vendors active in the Cloud, others of them didn't .. it wasn't a real camp , just some vendors pitching, they didn't hear any new stuff , or we didn't touch the real stuff.

So different opinions from different expectations...

Anyhow for all those who could't read the slides :

CloudSec , don't forget Security in the Cloud !

View more presentations from Kris Buytaert.

Or here

We are rebranding !

Kris Buytaert — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:27:27 +0000

So the cat is out of the bag,

As of today Inuits is rebranding to Pinuits,
The press release is here

We've had good feedback on the new name so far. Different people told me the name matched better to what we are doing . Actually my wife thinks our new name is much better as at least the Pin in Pinuits refers to our favourite Tux again ..

Finding an appropriate name for an Open Source consultancy company, with focus on Linux, Open Source Monitoring, MySQL, Open Source Virtualization , Large Scale Deployments , High Availability and Drupal, isn't easy .. you want to show both community involvement and professionality. And find a domain that's still available.

Slides updated

Kris Buytaert — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:04:55 +0000

I've updated the slidedeck of my Open Source Virtualization talk, with the 2009 edition as I gave it last week at the UKUUG Spring conference.

Talk is up, both on my page as on SlideShare

open source virtualization

View more presentations from Kris Buytaert.

Tom also updated our set of Open Source Monitoring Tool Shootout slides .
They are also on SlideShare

Open Source Monitoring Tools Shootout

View more presentations from tomdc.