[Xen-devel] Idea: xm config lint

[Mark Williamson <mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Just a quick suggestion for anyone who might be looking for a small tools 
hacking project (could perhaps be a good introduction for somebody wanting to 
get involved...)

We often get questions of the form: "My domain doesn't start, here's the boot 
output and the config file".  Often it's possible to see just from the config 
file where they are going wrong.  It'd be nice to have an xm config file 
"lint" that could pick common-case problems out automatically.

Such problems include:

* "root =" line does not match the disks export line (i.e. telling the guest 
to boot off a block device that you're not exporting to it)
* Specifying an LVM volume as a *target* device for a block export (e.g.  
disks = ['phy:/dev/vg/weirdolvmvolume,vg/weirdolvmvolume,w'].  We should only 
be targetting xd*, sd* or hd*.

Other things that could be checked later:
* elimentary mistakes in the kernel command line
* dodgy network configuration
* suggest corrections to syntax errors

This sort of tool would ideally be integrated into "xm create" to issue 
non-fatal warnings about potential problems.  It'll cut out a load of 
beginner requests on the lists and smooth off the learning curve a bit more.

Thoughts?  Volunteers?

Cheers,
Mark

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