[conspire] Church of Get It Done Now ... linuxmafia.com --> virtual? :-)

[Michael Paoli]

> From: "Michael Paoli" <Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu>
> Subject: Re: [conspire] Church of Get It Done Now ... linuxmafia.com  
> --> virtual? :-)
> Date: Sat, 25 May 2019 02:26:56 -0700

... with no X on the physical hosts ... about 3 options,
forgot to include one:
o create/build the VM - or even just the disk image - elsewhere,
   then transfer that over (e.g. via ssh).  Can then launch and
   run that easily enough, or if it's just disk image, easily build
   VM based around that disk image.  So, e.g. in example case of
   linuxmafia.com machine, don't need no steenkin' GUI at all,
   just change its console and boot manager configuration to
   default to using serial console for input, copy disk images
   over, build VM around that (no GUI needed), and you're good
   to go (and likely some minor and/or optional tweaks as posted
   earlier, e.g. Ethernet MAC address).  If the old host is brought
   down first & reboot from "recovery" or similar media, then there
   isn't even need to stop services on the old, and restart on the
   new - at least explicitly - as you'd never have both hosts up and
   running (at least that OS image - notwithstanding booted from
   recovery media or the like) - so, that's moderately bit longer
   outage, but also simpler in many ways.

Firing up VM and connecting to serial console, about as simple as:
# virsh start name_of_VM --console
Or if [re]attaching to same that's already up:
# virsh console name_of_VM

> As for building the VMs, sans GUI, maybe about 3 options:
> o use (virtual) serial console - hard bit would be specifying that
>   to the boot loader, without graphics console at all - would probably
>   have to tweak the typical ISO image - and even if booted with serial
>   console, the particular OS installation may - or may not - support
>   doing an install driven from serial console
> o PXE boot - wee bit more infrastructure to install - either on the
>   physical host - or ... don't want it there?  Can go elsewhere on
>   network - but if not that physical host, then that means putting it
>   elsewhere that can access the physical network - so bridging the
>   VM to that, not, e.g. behind qemu-kvm's (default if I recall correctly)
>   NAT/SNAted RFC-1918 'lil subnet for the VM(s).  In any case, you'll
>   likely want PXE boot set up and accessible *somehow* ... and can then
>   do, e.g. Debian (or (most?) derivatives thereof
>   FAI (Fully Automatic Installation),
>   or Kickstart for Fedora & (most?) derivatives, etc.