[one-users] Writing one template that allows for persistent VM:

[Steven Timm]

I am trying to come up with a prescription for users that allows the
following sequence:

1) Launch a VM based on a standard VM repository template

2) Save the contents of the VM back to the VM repositor\

3) Relaunch the VM without modifying the template.

I've tried the following thus far:

1) Launch the VM initially from a VM OS file outside the VM repository
with save=yes.  this does save the VM OS but just to
/var/lib/one/<vmid>/disk.0, not back to the original file.
User must copy that file somewhere and/or change their template.

1a) Launch the VM and then execute a onevm saveas command.
     this gets a copy of the image back to the image repository
     but again user must modify the template to relaunch the VM.

2) Make a public VM image in the repository, launch from that.
Problems--even if image is public, other users (even oneadmin) can't read 
it and sometimes I myself can't read it, without going into
the image repo and chmod'ing the file by hand.  And again
you are forced to save back to something other than the original file.

3) Make a persistent non-public image in the repository.
Again there are permission problems launching, and it can only
be used once by one user.  Even so I can't get it to save back to the
repository.

Everything that we need to do is doable, but it takes hacking around
with the template every time to be able to launch where we
left off.  We need a way to make things more seamless.

Steve Timm



-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven C. Timm, Ph.D  (630) 840-8525
timm at fnal.gov  http://home.fnal.gov/~timm/
Fermilab Computing Division, Scientific Computing Facilities,
Grid Facilities Department, FermiGrid Services Group, Group Leader.
Lead of FermiCloud project.