[Openstack-devel] Metapackages and stuff

[Roland Mas]

Hi all,

I've spent some time working on the build and installation procedure,
making sure it's stable and reproducible from scratch.

  I already mentioned earlier a script that installs the proxy node
non-interactively with some Debconf preseeding, from a "clean" VM
snapshot ("clean" as in base system with the prerequisites and the
appropriate configuration for a mini-dinstall repository).  This script
now installs the openstack-proxy-node, and it leads to a mostly working
proxy node.  The services are running and the endpoints are registered.
The dashboard doesn't run right away (for some reason, the WSGI scripts
die with a segmentation fault until the next reboot or Apache restart),
and when it does some pages take quite a long time to display (there
seem to be timeouts getting some information out of some services).

  For a compute node, I wrote a similar script with similar preseeding,
and added some Debconf and postinst magic to the openstack-compute-node
metapackage, so that the compute node can also be installed
non-interactively.  The endpoints are also registered on installation,
but I'd welcome a review of that part because I'm really doing things in
the dark (not sure what needs to be registered where).

  I also have a script to build all the packages in pbuilder, to ensure
that there are no loops or unsatisfiable build-dependencies.

  As for install-time dependencies, the proxy node can almost be
installed on pure Wheezy (it requires the node-less package, which is
only in Sid at the moment); for the compute node, the packages required
from Sid are python-cliff and python-setuptools-git (I have no idea why
the latter is there).

  A word of caution: the packages seem to install fine, but that doesn't
mean they actually work :-)  Based on what I can see on IRC, I'm not the
only one who's more familiar with packaging than with the concepts
behind Openstack (Thomas, I admire you for trying to tackle the
networking stack).  Feedback from people used to setting up Openstack by
hand or using working Openstack clouds would be most welcome.

  But since the packages build and install, and their structure is
broadly correct, I think it may be time to think about uploading their
current state to Debian experimental.  Your thoughts?

Roland.
-- 
Roland Mas

La tradition orale, c'est comme un vieux fromage [...] -- Le Blaire
  -- Signatures à collectionner, série n°2, partie 1/3.