LXD network setup question could be more explicit

[Mark Shuttleworth]

The new LXd network setup is great! We could make the install time question a little clearer though. Currently it is "Do you want LXD to setup a network bridge for you?" which left me wondering whether it was going to happen automatically or if I would get to specify the parameters.

I would suggest we change this question to:

"Would you like to setup a network bridge for LXD containers now? If not, you will need to do this manually later for full networking between LXD containers and the outside world."

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

Hi Mark,

Unfortunately debconf doesn't allow such long question strings...

What we can do however is change the question itself from:

 "Do you want LXD to setup a network bridge for you?"

to:

 "Would you like to setup a network bridge for LXD containers now?"

And the description text shown above it from:

"""
 Containers need a bridge to connect them together and to the host for
 outside network connectivity.

 LXD can manage a bridge for you, or you can choose to use your own
 existing one instead.
"""

To:

 """
 Containers need a bridge to connect them together and to the host for
 outside network connectivity.

 Choosing this option will let you configure the default LXD bridge to
 your liking.

 If you would rather not have LXD do this for you, then you will be
 asked whether you want to use an existing bridge or just do everything
 manually.
"""

Do you think that would do the trick?

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

Screenshot of the suggested change: https://dl.stgraber.org/lxd-setup.png

[Daniel Westervelt (danwest)]

Very happy to have this but .. personally I think it is a bit jarring (and ugly) to launch the debconf UI after being asked for ZFS config via in-line questions.

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

I can certainly agree with that, but the mandate for LXD until now has been to not deal with network configuration itself, keeping this separate, for example using neutron on nova-lxd.

The result is that the LXD upstream code as to how to create a bridge, all it deals with is existing layer-2 interfaces.

The bridge as it will be in 16.04 is created by the Ubuntu packaging. We do carry a tiny patch against upstream which has "lxd init" trigger that packaging for the user's convenience (used to be two separate steps).

Having LXD duplicate all the questions in lxd init would mean a far bigger patch which would break should the Ubuntu packaging ever be changed without a matching change against the upstream code. It's also worth pointing out that "lxd init" isn't translated right now while the debconf questions are, so on top of the maintenance burden and risk of breakages, this would also be a regression in that regard.

I think the right way forward is to discuss having bridge setup be done by LXD itself next cycle, at which point this feature would move entirely from distro packaging into the upstream code. But it's not something we're going to rush in two weeks before final release.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package lxd - 2.0.0~rc8-0ubuntu7

---------------
lxd (2.0.0~rc8-0ubuntu7) xenial; urgency=medium

  * More lxdbr0 tweaks:
    - Update wording of the initial question. (LP: #1566764)
    - Refuse empty output for questions needing a value.
    - Trigger lxd (through lxd-containers.service) so that it starts
      again if it should be running.
    - Make it possible to disable the profile update part of the lxdbr0
      integration while keeping a working bridge.
    - Fix preinst so that reading an empty /etc/default/lxd-bridge works.

 -- Stéphane Graber <email address hidden> Wed, 06 Apr 2016 15:56:55 -0400

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Thanks for the quick turnaround!

Mark