[Umlbuilder-devel] Re: UML Builder futures

[Roger B. <ro...@ro...>]

> Good to see writing this thing hasn't cost you your sense of humor. :-)

I'm British so that would be 'humour'.  But then I do live in California ...

> And I had another idea in conjunction with these. If you've got the UML
> startup silent, and TTYs to TCP/IP, how about adding a SysV-type script that
> will fire up the UMLs on host bootup, and cleanly shut them down on host
> shutdown?

That was kind of the intention behind the control script.  In a few
more revisions it should have all the right things done.

> For this you'd need to set CAD to hit the right runlevel, of course.

The cad doing a shutdown is important as well.  Currently there is no
clean way to shutdown a UML session from outside of it.  I had a dirty
hack.  I would put a symlink named 'linux' alongside control that pointed 
at /bin/ls. Then do 'control cad'.  When UML "reboots", it reruns linux, 
which in this case is ls and everything stops.

Doing it properly is now higher on the todo list.

> Any way to automate this? Perhaps, if you're dumping the UML to a logfile,
> you could run a diff between the last time you ran the test and this time.
> Then hopefully you could scan for changes quickly.

Doing the scan of the install logs is easy.  The time consuming bit is
starting each UML session, logging in and check things out that way.
(Currently at 12 versions, will be adding RedFlag soon, and want to do
Redmond/Lycoris.  Go to http://www.distrowatch.com/ to see the size of
the "problem".)

> True. But in the interim, I'd think adding ftp is justifiable, no? As it
> stands, I don't really know any way to get "out" from a base UML install to
> install additional packages, without adding ftp or the like from outside. Am
> I missing something?

Possibly.  See "Package Selection" in
http://umlbuilder.sourceforge.net/running.shtml

> Are there any advantages of not re-using the host
> IP? Such as being able to actually ping the UML itself?

You should be able to ping the UML session anyway.  The
only thing you lose is the ability to ping the tap endpoint on the
host itself (and you could still that with ping -i).

The only other use for seperate IPs I can see is in iptables/ipchains
rules.  However you pick which host interface UML Builder uses, so you
can effectively make it look like the UML sessions are attached to
a specific real interface, and it will be filtered against the same
rules as other traffic on that interface.

> Yes, that'd be neat. Then I can easily add non-compiled modules. I suppose
> it'll require Jeff to start distributing the modules that are compiled with
> each new UML release, no?

He already does.  Look in /usr/lib/uml.  UML Builder automatically installs
them for you during the initial install.  (Jeff you may want to remove
modules-2.2.tar though :-)

Roger
--
Roger Binns   ro...@ta...  http://www.tarantella.com
Business Development Manager, Tarantella
425 Encinal Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, USA
Tel 831 427 7367  Fax 831 427 5406