Various usability issues with adt-buildvm-ubuntu-cloud

[Robie Basak]

$ adt-buildvm-ubuntu-cloud -r wily
WARNING: python-distro-info not installed, falling back to determining default release from currently installed release
Downloading http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/wily/current/wily-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.img...
285.0/286.5 MB (100%)
Download successful.
Resizing image, adding 4G...
Image resized.
Building seed image...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/adt-buildvm-ubuntu-cloud", line 325, in <module>
    args.metadata, args.userdata, args.post_command)
  File "/usr/bin/adt-buildvm-ubuntu-cloud", line 249, in build_seed
    cwd=workdir)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.4/subprocess.py", line 859, in __init__
    restore_signals, start_new_session)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.4/subprocess.py", line 1459, in _execute_child
    raise child_exception_type(errno_num, err_msg)
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'genisoimage'

Similar to bug 1460066, it would be nice if I discovered this before downloading the image, or the downloaded image were cached so I didn't have to download it again.

Second, on retry I get:

Could not access KVM kernel module: Permission denied
failed to initialize KVM: Permission denied
qemu failed with status 1

...because I didn't belong to the kvm group.

My workflow often involves running autopkgtest on a fresh VM, so I hit these kinds of things often. Maybe a image download cache is the only real solution that will work, rather than trying to manage each thing individually?

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.10
Package: autopkgtest 3.14.3
ProcVersionSignature: User Name 3.19.0-20.20-generic 3.19.8
Uname: Linux 3.19.0-20-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.17.3-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Jun 18 12:26:51 2015
Ec2AMI: ami-00000413
Ec2AMIManifest: FIXME
Ec2AvailabilityZone: nova
Ec2InstanceType: m1.large
Ec2Kernel: aki-00000002
Ec2Ramdisk: ari-00000002
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: autopkgtest
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Maintaining a cache is a lot of effort which by itself can go wrong. You regularly need to prune the cache, and images there would only last for a day anyway. E. g. ~/.cache/ubuntuimages is a great example how not to do it, it keeps growing and cluttering your disk.

I'll add checks for /dev/kvm and genisoimage, thanks!

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I now added both checks, and fixed another bug. I ran adt-buildvm-ubuntu-cloud in a minimal VM and confirm that it doesn't download the image in vain now. (Side note: nice to see that nested QEMU works reasonably well!)

[Robie Basak (racb)]

Thanks!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package autopkgtest - 3.15.1

---------------
autopkgtest (3.15.1) unstable; urgency=medium

  * adt-buildvm-ubuntu-cloud: Fix lsb_release fallback if python3-distro-info
    is not available.
  * adt-buildvm-ubuntu-cloud: Don't move the uninitialized image to final
    location if QEMU failed.
  * adt-buildvm-ubuntu-cloud: Check availability of genisoimage and access of
    /dev/kvm before downloading image. (LP: #1466486)
  * Get along with dpkg-query not existing, such as in latest Ubuntu Snappy
    images. Skip generation of testbed-packages artifact in that case.
    (LP: #1469647)
  * Adjust NullRunner.test_tmp_install test case to work with pygobject 3.16.

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Mon, 29 Jun 2015 13:07:34 +0200