[Openvds-devel] RFC-OpenVDS-0001, Ideas for the future (software packages)

[Dave Cost]

Hi all ;-)

I hope you spent some enjoyable time in the past days.

This is an "official" request for comments on an openvds feature that has
been in my mind for some time.

The idea is to make it easy to provide additional software (not included in
the skel) for openvds and to make it easy for the end user (i.e. the virtual
server owner or the domain owner) to install such software easily in the
space of the virtual server, without the intervention of the physical server
owner (i.e. us).

For example:

I would package/download a "webalizer" add-on which will be made available
somehow for installation. The VDS owner (or the domain owner) will have a
"push-button" interface to install this package on it's server. Once
installed, the add-on will start functioning immediately in the virtual
server as if it was there from the beginning.

By packading everything as add-ons, it would be easier to maintain skels
(i.e. we could have a single stripped-down skel) and the availability of
many add-ons to personalize the skel. I could think of a system which will
be very similar to the way normal packages (i.e. rpm) work in a standard
linux server.

The difference between real rpms and the add-ons for openvds would be that
the add-ons should be openvds-aware (i.e. they will been to be bounded to
the ip address of the virtual server at installation time).

Further, upgrading an add-on will not require a complete rebuild of a new
skel, and a migration of the whole virtual server. It will be just an
upgrade of the sindle add-on with no downtime if not necessary (i.e. a
webalizer upgrade will not require to stop the whole server, and re-link it
to a new skel).

I can think of other advantages, like:

*) Distribution of general-purpose *small* skels ready to run
*) Distribution of stand-alone add-ons (servers, software, control pannels
etc)
*) Development of add-ons with no synchronization between developers.
*) Easier installation of new software and maintenance of existing virtual
servers.

I understand that I'm targething the hosting industry here, but I think this
is what we all need right now.

-- How to make it --

I could immagine that each add-on will be contained in a single "tar"
archive with specific files inside (i.e. install/uninstall/upgrade script, a
version information, a tar archive with the other files) much like the .deb
packages.

The add-ons could be uploaded in a specific directory of the hosting
server/virtual server where they could be found. Maybe we could have
sub-directories in this main dir for the categories.

The installation could be as simple as untarring the add-on in a /tmp
directory and running the install/upgrade script which would in turn unpack
the necessary files and modify the relevant system configuration files.

Another option we have would be the use of the rpm system from redhat. This
will require us to have an updated packages database and vds-specific rpms.
I can immagine that we'll have to modify the rpm manager so, writing a new
and simple one could be a better choice.

Comments welcome.

Dave

PS: Please note the format of the subject. I think that it will be easier to
follow discussions if we all follow this format when introducing new
concepts.