VMware: Unable to boot from ISO when a 0 GB root disk size is specified

[Ryan Hsu]

When using VC Driver, booting an ISO will fail when a flavor with a 0 GB root disk size is specified.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/stack/nova/nova/compute/manager.py", line 1703, in _spawn
    block_device_info)
  File "/opt/stack/nova/nova/virt/vmwareapi/driver.py", line 598, in spawn
    admin_password, network_info, block_device_info)
  File "/opt/stack/nova/nova/virt/vmwareapi/vmops.py", line 562, in spawn
    _create_virtual_disk(dest_vmdk_path, root_gb_in_kb)
  File "/opt/stack/nova/nova/virt/vmwareapi/vmops.py", line 370, in _create_virtual_disk
    self._session._wait_for_task(vmdk_create_task)
  File "/opt/stack/nova/nova/virt/vmwareapi/driver.py", line 906, in _wait_for_task
    ret_val = done.wait()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/eventlet/event.py", line 116, in wait
    return hubs.get_hub().switch()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/eventlet/hubs/hub.py", line 187, in switch
    return self.greenlet.switch()
VMwareDriverException: A specified parameter was not correct.

The error message seen in vSphere client is "The virtual disk size is too small".

Log available here: http://paste.openstack.org/show/73516/

[Tracy Jones (tjones-i)]

ryan can you paste the command you use too?

[Ryan Hsu (rhsu)]

There were no special properties needed for the boot command. I used the following command: "nova boot --flavor 1 --image <iso image id> my-test-instance"

[Tracy Jones (tjones-i)]

found out it's an issue with nova only.

[Tracy Jones (tjones-i)]

Gary - perhaps we should not even create a root disk when it's an ISO? I tried to do that but ran into some config issues.

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Fix proposed to branch: master
Review: https://review.openstack.org/80835

[Gary Kotton (garyk)]

https://review.openstack.org/#/c/80835/

[Gary Kotton (garyk)]

Tracy, in some cases we need to create the root disk. An example is an cloud provider enabling users to boot from an iso and then install their VM's. All subsequent boots will use the local disk.

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Reviewed: https://review.openstack.org/80835
Committed: https://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/nova/commit/?id=d39442007157c3074c199aba64424b2f4b08f461
Submitter: Jenkins
Branch: master

commit d39442007157c3074c199aba64424b2f4b08f461
Author: Gary Kotton <email address hidden>
Date: Sun Mar 16 06:47:13 2014 -0700

    VMware: enable booting an ISO with root disk size 0

    There may be cases where booting from an ISO does not require
    any local disk. In this case the flavor may have the root disk
    size set at 0.

    Change-Id: Id290a0ede11c754f686d3b70322c84c03f161637
    Closes-bug: #1292633