Hi Simon (2025.04.26_18:43:26_+0000)
Sorry, no. Because of the Rube Goldberg machine that autopkgtest-virt-qemu currently uses to invoke arbitrary commands on the testbed, it needs /usr/bin/python3 before it can run apt. It only needs python3-minimal and not full python3, I think.
Yeah, I can confirm python3-minimal only seems to work.
(Technically it could run apt directly in the passwordless root shell, but then we'd have to duplicate all the machinery to make apt noninteractive and set useful resolver options, and when something goes wrong you wouldn't get any of the output of apt logged somewhere that the autopkgtest caller can see it, except when using a-v-qemu --debug, which is very noisy.)
Fair enough. It's a "nice to have" minimal images, but not required.
Using ssh for command execution would address this, at the cost of needing to preinstall either openssh-server or its dropbear equivalent. Is that a normal thing to have in Incus VM images?
For incus we have the incus-agent backdoor into VMs, which autopkgtest-virt-incus uses. It's installed on startup by a shim that detects a p9 filesystem housing the agent binary.
For qmeu, there is also qemu-guest-agent, I don't know if that's ever been considered as on option for autopkgtest-virt-qemu.
Stefano -- Stefano Rivera http://tumbleweed.org.za/ +1 415 683 3272
