alias can not support list for pci device

[fupingxie]

when add alias in pci section in nova.conf, can not use a list. Like this:
alias = [{"product_id":"1b06","address":"02:00.0"},{"product_id":"1b06","address":"03:00.0"}]

[fupingxie (fpxie)]

1. If alias is a list, it will fail in function _get_alias_from_config when creating VM using pci device.
2. whitelist in nova.conf can support a list.

[melanie witt (melwitt)]

Based on the docstrings in the nova.conf for 'pci', it looks like both the 'alias' and 'passthrough_whitelist' options should be able to support a JSON list of JSON dictionaries as shown in this bug report. For example:

    ...

    cfg.MultiStrOpt('passthrough_whitelist',
        default=[],
        deprecated_name='pci_passthrough_whitelist',
        deprecated_group='DEFAULT',
        help="""

    ...

    passthrough_whitelist = [{"product_id":"0001", "vendor_id":"8086"},
                             {"product_id":"0002", "vendor_id":"8086"}]

So, if this is not working, it is a valid bug.

[1] https://github.com/openstack/nova/blob/9e628766570e0af5b69aab416e5234f633498eab/nova/conf/pci.py

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Fix proposed to branch: master
Review: https://review.openstack.org/592243

[Eric Fried (efried)]

But you can specify the 'alias' key multiple times, right?

 [pci]
 alias = { ... }
 alias = { ... }

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Reviewed: https://review.openstack.org/592243
Committed: https://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/nova/commit/?id=d086389366ca9f76750c60c33db1d948a8bc69ff
Submitter: Zuul
Branch: master

commit d086389366ca9f76750c60c33db1d948a8bc69ff
Author: fpxie <email address hidden>
Date: Thu Aug 16 10:05:23 2018 +0800

    Add an example to add more pci devices in nova.conf

    The help for the [pci]aliases config option was confusing in that it
    wasn't clear how to specify multiple aliases. The default value being []
    made it seem like you ought to be able to specify a list as:

     alias = [{...}, {...}, ...]

    This won't actually work; you instead have to say:

     alias = {...}
     alias = {...}
     ...

    So this patch adds a multi-alias example to the help string and
    explicitly calls out the fact that you can't use list values.

    See the referenced bug for more details.
    Change-Id: I71d4c440340db31d22a73a8b3e3abc51771aa7bc
    Closes-Bug: #1786870

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

This issue was fixed in the openstack/nova 19.0.0.0rc1 release candidate.