View source for Porting Templates / Migrating OpenVZ Containers across PVE 1.x and PVE 2.x

{{Note|Article about old Proxmox VE releases up to 2.x}}

Due to recent (Jan 2013) changes in Console Access in PVE 2.x the following use cases need attention:
* Backing up from PVE 1.x and restoring to PVE 2.x or vice versa
* Deploying / Migrating OpenVZ containers based on OpenVZ templates designed for PVE 1.x (OpenVZ.org supplied templates and ProxmoxVE 1.x Templates) in PVE 2.x and viceversa
* The OpenVZ team decided to do not include the '''init logger''' code. Hence PVE 2.2 onwards now use the official OpenVZz solution for the console.

== OpenVZ Template Design Issues in DAB ==
 pveversion | cut -d/ -f2
on the host yields '''1.9''' for PVE 1.9 and '''2.2''' for PVE 2.2 and may be used to determine the host in which the template is being made in DAB.

A way to determine the PVE version of the host from within the OpenVZ Container would be useful.

=== Startup Scripts ===
* '''init rc''' was switched to '''insserv''' before PVE 1.9 itself and continues to be so in PVE 2.x

=== /etc/inittab ===
Recently (Jan 2013) PVE 2.2 switched to using the new Console Access method that uses a Virtualised  a TTY Console. This requires the appending of the following line to the file /etc/inittab in the template and the recent versions of DAB do so without change to the DAB code - possibly through one of the debs / rpms.

 1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1

Although [http://serverfault.com/questions/435181/entries-in-etc-inittab-below-last-line-possible-hack many hacks] have been found where code appended to the '''/etc/inittab''' have been the entry point, in this case it is intentional.

For PVE 1.x hosts, the OpenVZ containers should comment out the said line if present.

==== Error if not corrected in PVE 1.x ====
If the said corrections are not carried out, then the following will show up in the container logs and taken from:
<pre>
# cat /var/log/syslog
..
..
Jan 29 17:38:13 myvmname init: Id "1" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
..
..
</pre>

==== If not corrected in PVE 2.x ====
The new console access feature will not be available if the said line is absent in the '''/etc/inittab''' file.

==== Usage in DAB Makefile for PVE 1.x ====
 sed -e 's/^\s*1:2345:respawn/# 1:2345:respawn/' -i ${BASEDIR}/etc/inittab
The above maybe placed just before the '''dab finalize''' statement.

== Migration Issues for OpenVZ Containers ==
As there is no way currently to determine the PVE version of the host, the OpenVZ container to be migrated should have it's '''/etc/inittab''' corrected as above '''''before switching it on in the target host'''''.

If the OpenVZ container is running and the above change was made in the '''/etc/inittab''' file, then the following can be run to re-initialise the container:
 telinit q


== References ==
* [http://forum.proxmox.com/threads/12625-MySQL-error-on-locking-in-recent-Squeeze-DAB-template-VM-on-bootup Forum Post]
* [[OpenVZ Console]]

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