[CentOS-devel] How CentOS 7 Vagrant images are built

Fri May 15 13:12:34 UTC 2020
Laurențiu Păncescu <lpancescu at centosproject.org>

Hello Fabian,

On 5/14/20 8:20 AM, Fabian Arrotin wrote:
 > Clarification eventually needed : those are built through
 > https://koji.mbox.centos.org/koji/, so the dedicated koji instance for
 > distro, and distro artifacts like iso images, cloud images, etc..
 > [snip]
 > @Laurentiu: would that help if we'd have a c8 image-builder in
 > cbs.centos.org env ? I think Brian wanted to ensure that all released
 > content for 8/stream would be built from the other koji.mbox setup, but
 > at least you'd be able to test the build/image through ci before
 > eventually then submitting a PR for the 8 kickstart (if/when needed) ?
 > Normally you can still build the 6/7 vagrant images like before.

It certainly would, I would be able to build the Vagrant images normally 
again. The question is, would you like to take this over in the core 
team? It would make sense for all official images to be produced 
together, but the ISO images are only generated after a point release, 
while Vagrant images used to have monthly releases and I imagine Vagrant 
users prefer it this way. I don't see any VMware and HyperV versions of 
the centos/8 images on cloud.centos.org, just VirtualBox and libvirt. 
Using the build process I had on cico produced all four types of images 
(vmware, vbox, hyperv and libvirt), every month - the only problem was 
copying the images from CBS to cloud.c.o.

 > My view on the problem is more about what to do when it's built/tested :
 > I saw you asking multiple times Johnny to have those released but
 > nothing done and not follow-up, is that the issue ?

Yes. I wrote Johnny again two days ago, still no answer.

 > Just dropping the .box files to make those appearing on cloud.centos.org
 > (at least for 6 and 7) is something I can help with .. but no idea about
 > how is the image-index file generated (and if that's even needed for
 > vagrant, but don't think so). Problem is more about if I add those and
 > then Johnny deletes those because he's pushing from another setup, that
 > wouldn't work

This would be great, the files are in the CBS jobs 1276555 and 1276553. 
The signed SHA256SUMS file is not necessary for Vagrant, it's just nice 
for people who gpg-check the images to be sure they come from the CentOS 
Project.

 > And also : nobody from the CPE team has access to upstream
 > atlas/hashicorp vagrant setup to update info when new box is released,
 > so that would also be a problem for people trying to consume those
 > updated images if not declared at https://app.vagrantup.com/centos

Karanbir and I do have access, I have been publishing the images there 
since 2016. It doesn't have to be manually though, there's an API key 
and I already did some experiments to see if it's possible to create the 
links and a new version automatically - that works. So we could have a 
fully automated process for the Vagrant images: building, testing, 
copying to cloud.c.o., signing, creating a new version of the boxes on 
Vagrant Cloud (formerly Atlas) and publishing them for our users. This 
is what I spoke with Karanbir to do using Duffy nodes, it would make 
everything much more smooth by not having several people in the loop, 
but I understand you now have your own process for doing that?

Best regards,
Laurențiu