[Lxc-users] start order

[Serge Hallyn]

Quoting Michael H. Warfield (mhw at wittsend.com):
> There has been very little discussion in the main project over how to
> manage autobooting containers (or maybe I've missed it).  Maybe it's
> time we had it.
>
> What I do now is specific to my constellations of 6 lxc hosts (about 4
> dozen guest containers) at two sites.  I would personally prefer this
> sort of information to be contained in the individual container config
> files, ala OpenVZ and Linux-Vservers, without creating an entirely new,
> distribution specific, configuration file.
> 
> Primary argument with having it contained within the container config
> really concerns migration.  When I migrated a container from one host to
> another host in the same cluster, if all that information is in the
> container config, it follows along.  If you bury it in a common config,
> you then have to edit those configuration files on both the servers (the
> throwing and the catching) in order to properly complete the migration.
> I don't like that idea at all.

Buried in a config, but it could be exposed by lxc-info so it wouldn't
be so bad.  Though I guess it could be an issue for boot-speed fanatics
who want to minimize random disk access during boot.  A simple
LXC_AUTOSTART=no default would probably make them happy (how many ppl
really want autostart, and of those, how many of the systems they boot
every day do they want it enabled on?)

It'd be great to have distro-independent boot startup and ordering built
in, so that distros don't have to roll their own.  Sounds like you all
have some great ideas so I'll look for patches :)

What I think would be great is

	1. lxc.conf updates to indicate autostart delay and order or
	   dependencies
	2. an lxc command to spit out containers which should be started,
	   in order (to loop over)
	3. lxc-info update to optionally list that information
	4. could package sysvinit, upstart, and systemd templates.

-serge