Hello Johannes, Johannes Schauer [2018-01-04 15:46 +0100]: > my use case is: use the autopkgtest qemu backend with sbuild. This works > well after having created the image with vmdebootstrap but after a while > the image has to be persistently upgraded. It would be nice if you could > either: > > 1. document how to easily upgrade a autopkgtest qemu image outside of > sbuild
Note that autopkgtest does not require that the image you use with it was created by vmdebootstrap, and autopkgtest is not supposed to be a VM management tool. It merely can *use* a VM which satisfies certain properties (i. e. serial console or known root/sudo password). There's nothing magic about the vmdebootstrap images either - you can just boot them on the command line, or through libvirt, etc. That said, this can certainly be mentioned somehow in the autopkgtest-virt-qemu manpage. > 2. document which options to use so that the qemu image is persistently > upgraded every time that sbuild runs autopkgtest The point of autopkgtest is to use ephemeral overlays, not to make anything persistent. So this isn't and shouldn't be possible. > As for (1.), when I run: > > $ sudo qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 4G -drive > format=raw,file=/srv/qemu/unstable-amd64-autopkgtest.img > > Then I get "no bootable device". Possibly because this is not a raw device, but a qcow2 image? There's little reason to explicitly specify it, just let qemu figure it out by itself. Try -drive file=/srv/qemu/unstable-amd64-autopkgtest.img,if=virtio > As for (2.), I was unsuccessful to use the -U option or --setup-commands > options to do persisting upgrades. This didn't work: Right, because autopkgtest-virt-qemu always creates an ephemeral overlay. It never ever touches the given VM image. Martin
