Deploying a KVM (x86_64) Device¶
Adding a KVM device to LAVA is an easy way to make sure things work without having to worry about connecting to a physical device and setting up a master image. This page outlines the steps required to add a new KVM device to your LAVA deployment and make it able to accept job requests.
Obtain an image¶
A variety of pre-built images are available for download:
http://images.validation.linaro.org/kvm/
Building KVM images for LAVA¶
If the prebuilt images are not suitable, new images can be built using
vmdebootstrap
and a couple of custom overlay packages. However, image
building tools are constantly developing and this guide can easily become
out of date, so you will need to read the manpages for the tools and update
the instructions appropiately.
The overlays are only necessary if you are not going to use the automated login support in LAVA. See Deploying an image to a device for the current dispatcher and Writing a job submission in YAML for the pipeline dispatcher.
git clone git://git.linaro.org/lava/lava-vmdebootstrap.git
lava-vmdebootstrap
is just a small wrapper around vmdebootstrap which
does all the hard work. What lava-vmdebootstrap
does is download
the Linaro image overlays and pass some options that we will always need
so that you don’t need to.
The default distribution is Debian stable. Add the ``–distribution=wheezy` option to change to wheezy.
If you choose to use the installed vmdebootstrap
package, tweak the
file:lava-vmdebootstrap call to change ./vmdebootstrap
to vmdebootstrap
.
To build wheezy images on Debian stable, you may need to install the
mbr
package as well.
Example invocation:
$ sudo ./lava-vmdebootstrap --image=myimage.img
To run the test image, make sure it is writeable:
$ sudo chmod a+w ./myimage.img
(Newer versions of vmdebootstrap
can do this for you if you pass the
--owner=$(whoami)
option.
Execute using qemu, e.g. on amd64 using qemu-system-x86_64:
$ qemu-system-x86_64 ./myimage.img
See man 1 vmdebootstrap
and man qemu-system
for more information.
Once the overlay packages have been downloaded, you can call vmdebootstrap
directly to create other types of images without needing to modify
lava-vmdebootstrap
. e.g. this is a call to vmdebootstrap
to create a
KVM image based on Ubuntu:
sudo vmdebootstrap \
--custom-package='linaro-overlay_1112.2_all.deb' \
--custom-package='linaro-overlay-minimal_1112.2_all.deb' \
--enable-dhcp --no-kernel --package=linux-image \
--serial-console --serial-console-command='/bin/auto-serial-console' \
--root-password='root' --hostname='ubuntu' --user=linaro/linaro --sudo \
--verbose --image=myimage.img
This command extends lava-vmdebootstrap
to make a 4G LAVA KVM image
based on Debian testing using the UK Debian mirror:
sudo vmdebootstrap \
--custom-package='linaro-overlay_1112.2_all.deb' \
--custom-package='linaro-overlay-minimal_1112.2_all.deb' \
--enable-dhcp \
--serial-console --serial-console-command='/bin/auto-serial-console' \
--root-password='root' \
--distribution testing --size 4g \
--mirror http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian \
--verbose --image=myimage.img
Adding a KVM device to LAVA¶
You can use the Instance name support:
$ sudo /usr/share/lava-server/add_device.py kvm kvm01
- Add the
root_part = 1
line to the device configuration - Configure Optional: networking configuration
Configure the dispatcher manually¶
Create your kvm01.conf file with the following content:
device_type = kvm
root_part = 1
Sample job file (replace file:///path/to/kvm.img
with the actual
location where you placed the image you created in the previous step):
{
"timeout": 18000,
"job_name": "kvm-test",
"device_type": "kvm",
"target": "kvm01",
"actions": [
{
"command": "deploy_linaro_image",
"parameters": {
"image": "file:///path/to/kvm.img"
}
},
{
"command": "boot_linaro_image"
}
]
}
To test, you can execute the dispatcher directly with the following
command as root
:
lava-dispatch /tmp/kvm.json
Optional: networking configuration¶
By default, LAVA kvm
devices will use virtio
networking, which
is a lot faster than the QEMU default at the time of writing this. But
the default configuration also uses NAT, which makes the virtual
machines unacessible from other hosts in your local network.
Setting up a TAP device for KVM networking is a way to both make networking faster and make the virtual machines available from other nodes in the network.
This requires some extra configuration, and that’s why it’s not the default. It goes like this:
Device configuration file(kvmXX.conf
):
device_type = kvm
root_part = 1
kvm_networking_options = -net nic,model=virtio -net tap
Then add a bridge interface to the networking configuration
(/etc/network/interfaces
). Example:
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet manual
auto br0
iface br0 inet dhcp
bridge_ports eth0
bridge_stp off
bridge_fd 0
bridge_maxwait 0
Please note the above are examples, as we do not want to duplicate the QEMU documentation. Make sure you consult the official QEMU documentation for detailed instructions on how to create a proper TAP interface setup.
Configuring the scheduler manually¶
Now that the dispatcher understand the KVM device and can work with it, we need to inform the LAVA scheduler about it. This is done from the admin panel in the LAVA web app.
You’ll first add a “kvm” device type by going to a URL like:
http://localhost/admin/lava_scheduler_app/devicetype/
That page will give you an option to add a device type. From the add device type page, you need to give the name “kvm”. Don’t touch any of the other options for now.
After adding a device type you can add a device. From this page you’ll want to set the hostname to the same value you set for ‘target’ in the dispatch config. Then select “kvm” from the device type list.
Now when you view:
http://localhost/scheduler/
You should see your new device type and be able to drill down to the device.
Submitting a KVM Job¶
The scheduler documentation includes instructions for Job Submission to LAVA. You can use the job file shown above as the basis for your new job.