Good news, everyone! We (me and CC'd Vojtech Trefny) would like to introduce you the next generation tool for storage management -- the **blivet-gui** tool [1]_. It is a GUI tool based on the blivet python library (originally Anaconda's storage management and configuration tool) inspired by GParted and other storage management tools. Why not use GParted you ask? The reason we came up with blivet-gui is that none of the existing storage management tools supports all storage technologies supported in modern Linux distributions. Anaconda does support them all so it's only logical to take Anaconda's storage backend, combine it with a nice, intuitive and in general user-friendly frontend and build a standalone application for storage management.
The GUI of blivet-gui is heavily based on GParted's UI to minimize the surprise which is very important in such a critical task as storage management is. If you know how to work with GParted, you'll almost instantly know how to work with blivet-gui. All requested changes are just enqueued first and then processed/committed to disk by the "Apply" button just like in GParted. However, with blivet-gui those actions may be something like the following sequence:
create 10GB partition sda1, create a LUKS device on top of it and use the LUKS device as a PV for a VG called ``dataVG`` with a single LV ``data`` occupying half of the VG space and with XFS on top of the LV,
not only partitioning and file system operations like GParted does.
Having troubles writing partitioning part of a kickstart file for automated installation? Run blivet-gui with the ``--kickstart`` option and export the partitioning portion of a kickstart file instead of committing changes to disk.
On top of the features described above, the blivet-gui is embedable so any application using any toolkit with the XEmbed protocol support (Gtk, Qt,...) may use blivet-gui as a part of its GUI.
The application only started its history few months ago, is under heavy development now and will get new features in the next months (RAID, BTRFS), but even now it is a very nice and useful tool.
Suggestions, feature requests, bug reports and of course PATCHES ARE WELCOME! It is quite a simple Gtk application written in Python which makes it an easy target for everybody who misses something in the other storage management tools. Don't like Gtk? Text mode would be really, really useful too! Don't feel like adding new features and diving deep in blivet to implement them? The code always needs refactorization and cleanup!
I think everybody can submit patches for blivet-gui and I'm really looking forward to see the hundreds of patches from all those people that hate every storage management GUIs and tools that have every existed. Let's spend some time on pushing the Linux storage management further instead of just complaining!
.. [1] http://blog.vojtechtrefny.cz/blivet-gui
P.S. Do you know about any other mailing lists or individuals that may be interested in this announcement? Feel free to forward the message and spread the word!
----- Original Message -----
Good news, everyone! We (me and CC'd Vojtech Trefny) would like to introduce you the next generation tool for storage management -- the **blivet-gui** tool [1]_. It is a GUI tool based on the blivet python library (originally Anaconda's storage management and configuration tool) inspired by GParted and other storage management tools. Why not use GParted you ask?
Actually my question is "why not gnome-disk-utility?" :)
On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 09:04 -0400, Bastien Nocera wrote:
----- Original Message -----
Good news, everyone! We (me and CC'd Vojtech Trefny) would like to introduce you the next generation tool for storage management -- the **blivet-gui** tool [1]_. It is a GUI tool based on the blivet python library (originally Anaconda's storage management and configuration tool) inspired by GParted and other storage management tools. Why not use GParted you ask?
Actually my question is "why not gnome-disk-utility?" :)
Because it doesn't work well with LVM, RAID, BTRFS and a combination of them.
On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 15:55 +0200, Vratislav Podzimek wrote:
On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 09:04 -0400, Bastien Nocera wrote:
----- Original Message -----
Good news, everyone! We (me and CC'd Vojtech Trefny) would like to introduce you the next generation tool for storage management -- the **blivet-gui** tool [1]_. It is a GUI tool based on the blivet python library (originally Anaconda's storage management and configuration tool) inspired by GParted and other storage management tools. Why not use GParted you ask?
Actually my question is "why not gnome-disk-utility?" :)
Because it doesn't work well with LVM, RAID, BTRFS and a combination of them.
Leaving LVM out was an explicit decision, because of all the system integration problems with LVM. It works fine with RAID and btrfs as far as I know. Do you have any concrete complaints about the RAID or btrfs support in gnome-disk-utility ?
On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 11:52 -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 15:55 +0200, Vratislav Podzimek wrote:
On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 09:04 -0400, Bastien Nocera wrote:
----- Original Message -----
Good news, everyone! We (me and CC'd Vojtech Trefny) would like to introduce you the next generation tool for storage management -- the **blivet-gui** tool [1]_. It is a GUI tool based on the blivet python library (originally Anaconda's storage management and configuration tool) inspired by GParted and other storage management tools. Why not use GParted you ask?
Actually my question is "why not gnome-disk-utility?" :)
Because it doesn't work well with LVM, RAID, BTRFS and a combination of them.
Leaving LVM out was an explicit decision, because of all the system integration problems with LVM. It works fine with RAID
No, it doesn't:
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-disk-utility/commit/?id=820e2d3d325aef357...
the RAID support was entirely removed with that commit.
and btrfs as far as I know. Do you have any concrete complaints about the RAID or btrfs support in gnome-disk-utility ?
So far as btrfs goes - well, I wouldn't say complaints, but it's not at all in the same capability league as blivet.
I just booted a current F21 nightly (so, current gnome-disks code) and the extent of its ability to create new btrfs filesystems seems to be 'you can format a partition, pick "Custom" as the "Type", and set it to btrfs'.
That's fine so far as it goes, but it's a long way from really 'supporting' btrfs. btrfs isn't a simple filesystem like FAT or NTFS or ext or xfs. It's more of an all-singing, all-dancing combined filesystem/volume management/redundancy/kitchen sink arrangement. blivet actually understands all of this, it really *supports* btrfs: you can create btrfs volumes that span multiple disks, configure a lot of their attributes, and create and configure subvolumes within the volumes. Unless I'm missing something, gnome-disks does none of that.
Honestly I don't see that gnome-disks and blivet-gui would be entirely playing in the same sandbox. It might be viable to think of them as GNOME's 'Network' control panel applet vs. nm-connection-editor, or something along those lines? But probably with even more of a difference. I like GNOME Disks, it's a great handy toolbox for doing simple manipulation of drives, but I'm not sure it quite fits the same mental box as blivet-gui would, for me.
On Sat, Sep 6, 2014 at 8:57 AM, Adam Williamson adamwill@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 11:52 -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 15:55 +0200, Vratislav Podzimek wrote:
On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 09:04 -0400, Bastien Nocera wrote:
----- Original Message -----
Good news, everyone! We (me and CC'd Vojtech Trefny) would like to introduce you the next generation tool for storage management -- the **blivet-gui** tool [1]_. It is a GUI tool based on the blivet python library (originally Anaconda's storage management and configuration tool) inspired by GParted and other storage management tools. Why not use GParted you ask?
Actually my question is "why not gnome-disk-utility?" :)
Because it doesn't work well with LVM, RAID, BTRFS and a combination of them.
Leaving LVM out was an explicit decision, because of all the system integration problems with LVM. It works fine with RAID
No, it doesn't:
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-disk-utility/commit/?id=820e2d3d325aef357...
the RAID support was entirely removed with that commit.
and btrfs as far as I know. Do you have any concrete complaints about the RAID or btrfs support in gnome-disk-utility ?
So far as btrfs goes - well, I wouldn't say complaints, but it's not at all in the same capability league as blivet.
I just booted a current F21 nightly (so, current gnome-disks code) and the extent of its ability to create new btrfs filesystems seems to be 'you can format a partition, pick "Custom" as the "Type", and set it to btrfs'.
That's fine so far as it goes, but it's a long way from really 'supporting' btrfs. btrfs isn't a simple filesystem like FAT or NTFS or ext or xfs. It's more of an all-singing, all-dancing combined filesystem/volume management/redundancy/kitchen sink arrangement. blivet actually understands all of this, it really *supports* btrfs: you can create btrfs volumes that span multiple disks, configure a lot of their attributes, and create and configure subvolumes within the volumes. Unless I'm missing something, gnome-disks does none of that.
Honestly I don't see that gnome-disks and blivet-gui would be entirely playing in the same sandbox. It might be viable to think of them as GNOME's 'Network' control panel applet vs. nm-connection-editor, or something along those lines? But probably with even more of a difference. I like GNOME Disks, it's a great handy toolbox for doing simple manipulation of drives, but I'm not sure it quite fits the same mental box as blivet-gui would, for me.
Yeah I don't think its an issue to have multiple applications for the same purpose. We have more than one app for pretty much all other tasks. As for the privileged vs. unprivileged ... that should be fixed.
On Friday 05 September 2014 23:57:46 Adam Williamson wrote:
I like GNOME Disks, it's a great handy toolbox for doing simple manipulation of drives, but I'm not sure it quite fits the same mental box as blivet-gui would, for me.
So, to extend the theoretical POV the way to go may have been: * Make the backend (udisks or equivalent) use python-blivet for a complete partitioning stack. * Let GNOME Disks expose only a "naive-user-friendly" subset of the functionality. * Let a full "blivet-ui" expose the full functionality. (obviously it's easier for me to do the talk than do the walk ;-)
On another related front, can anyone relate this to similar technologies: * SystemStorageManager (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SystemStorageManager) * openlmi-storage (https://git.fedorahosted.org/git/openlmi-storage.git) * The last one is even implemented in python.
Just to make clear -- I think multiple competing solutions in the same domain are totally OK, especially when it's not clear which technologies will get traction. So even though running UI's as root is really bad, thanks for the blivet-ui people for the effort to expose an important storage stack.
Bye,
On Sep 6, 2014, at 3:52 AM, Oron Peled oron@actcom.co.il wrote:
On another related front, can anyone relate this to similar technologies:
- SystemStorageManager (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SystemStorageManager)
It doesn't do partitioning. It's a CLI volume manager, not a backend. If you've ever been frustrated with LVM commands and options (there are a lot of them), or many different kinds of storage to manage, you'll like it because the nomenclature to create, grow, shrink, and delete volumes/subvolumes/snapshots is largely the same whether the underlying fs is btrfs, LVM, or mdraid. For 'ssm list' alone it's worth it.
- openlmi-storage (https://git.fedorahosted.org/git/openlmi-storage.git)
It uses blivet. But also has a more going on as it relates to monitoring as well.
Chris Murphy
On Sep 5, 2014, at 9:52 AM, Matthias Clasen mclasen@redhat.com wrote:
On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 15:55 +0200, Vratislav Podzimek wrote:
On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 09:04 -0400, Bastien Nocera wrote:
----- Original Message -----
Good news, everyone! We (me and CC'd Vojtech Trefny) would like to introduce you the next generation tool for storage management -- the **blivet-gui** tool [1]_. It is a GUI tool based on the blivet python library (originally Anaconda's storage management and configuration tool) inspired by GParted and other storage management tools. Why not use GParted you ask?
Actually my question is "why not gnome-disk-utility?" :)
Because it doesn't work well with LVM, RAID, BTRFS and a combination of them.
Leaving LVM out was an explicit decision, because of all the system integration problems with LVM.
OK but then this answers the question "why not gdu?" because LVM is the default on Fedora.
For mortal users, and I'd argue that's most Workstation users, LVM is unfriendly and complicated to learn, therefore and realizes no benefit. Yet this would be very different if there were a GUI tool to leverage what LVM can do, without having to learn esoteric LVM stuff. Like adding a drive so the existing /home can be grown, or mirrored. Or live migrate a system to a replacement drive.
It works fine with RAID and btrfs as far as I know. Do you have any concrete complaints about the RAID or btrfs support in gnome-disk-utility ?
Goes back to 2010, "add Btrfs support to gdu/palimpsest" Understandably gdu wants better kernel support for multiple device btrfs volumes to know what physical devices are being used. In the meantime blivet deals with this issues itself and support multiple device creation and destruction correctly. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=608204
"btrfs snapshot and subvolume support" I'm not seeing a way to list, create, or delete subvolumes and snapshots. Or map multiple subvolumes to mountpoints. Blivet does this. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=710156
Similar to gdu, blivet doesn't currently support btrfs multiple device modification such as resizing, or device add/delete. Or initiate scrubs, either for btrfs or md/mdadm raid.
Chris Murphy
On Mon, 2014-09-08 at 10:00 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
On Sep 5, 2014, at 9:52 AM, Matthias Clasen mclasen@redhat.com wrote:
On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 15:55 +0200, Vratislav Podzimek wrote:
On Fri, 2014-09-05 at 09:04 -0400, Bastien Nocera wrote:
----- Original Message -----
Good news, everyone! We (me and CC'd Vojtech Trefny) would like to introduce you the next generation tool for storage management -- the **blivet-gui** tool [1]_. It is a GUI tool based on the blivet python library (originally Anaconda's storage management and configuration tool) inspired by GParted and other storage management tools. Why not use GParted you ask?
Actually my question is "why not gnome-disk-utility?" :)
Because it doesn't work well with LVM, RAID, BTRFS and a combination of them.
Leaving LVM out was an explicit decision, because of all the system integration problems with LVM.
OK but then this answers the question "why not gdu?" because LVM is the default on Fedora.
For mortal users, and I'd argue that's most Workstation users, LVM is unfriendly and complicated to learn, therefore and realizes no benefit. Yet this would be very different if there were a GUI tool to leverage what LVM can do, without having to learn esoteric LVM stuff. Like adding a drive so the existing /home can be grown, or mirrored. Or live migrate a system to a replacement drive.
It works fine with RAID and btrfs as far as I know. Do you have any concrete complaints about the RAID or btrfs support in gnome-disk-utility ?
Goes back to 2010, "add Btrfs support to gdu/palimpsest" Understandably gdu wants better kernel support for multiple device btrfs volumes to know what physical devices are being used. In the meantime blivet deals with this issues itself and support multiple device creation and destruction correctly. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=608204
"btrfs snapshot and subvolume support" I'm not seeing a way to list, create, or delete subvolumes and snapshots. Or map multiple subvolumes to mountpoints. Blivet does this. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=710156
Similar to gdu, blivet doesn't currently support btrfs multiple device modification such as resizing, or device add/delete. Or initiate scrubs, either for btrfs or md/mdadm raid.
Blivet already does support some of these things. See the following commit: https://github.com/dwlehman/blivet/commit/42a92a91
On Fri, Sep 05, 2014 at 11:05:29AM +0200, Vratislav Podzimek wrote:
Good news, everyone! We (me and CC'd Vojtech Trefny) would like to introduce you the next generation tool for storage management -- the **blivet-gui** tool [1]_.
Nice work! I really like the kickstart writing option.
On Sep 5, 2014 5:05 AM, "Vratislav Podzimek" vpodzime@redhat.com wrote:
Good news, everyone! We (me and CC'd Vojtech Trefny) would like to introduce you the next generation tool for storage management -- the **blivet-gui** tool [1]_. It is a GUI tool based on the blivet python library (originally Anaconda's storage management and configuration tool) inspired by GParted and other storage management tools. Why not use GParted you ask? The reason we came up with blivet-gui is that none of the existing storage management tools supports all storage technologies supported in modern Linux distributions. Anaconda does support them all so it's only logical to take Anaconda's storage backend, combine it with a nice, intuitive and in general user-friendly frontend and build a standalone application for storage management.
The GUI of blivet-gui is heavily based on GParted's UI to minimize the surprise which is very important in such a critical task as storage management is. If you know how to work with GParted, you'll almost instantly know how to work with blivet-gui. All requested changes are just enqueued first and then processed/committed to disk by the "Apply" button just like in GParted. However, with blivet-gui those actions may be something like the following sequence:
create 10GB partition sda1, create a LUKS device on top of it and use the LUKS device as a PV for a VG called ``dataVG`` with a single LV ``data`` occupying half of the VG space and with XFS on top of the LV,
not only partitioning and file system operations like GParted does.
Having troubles writing partitioning part of a kickstart file for automated installation? Run blivet-gui with the ``--kickstart`` option and export the partitioning portion of a kickstart file instead of committing changes to disk.
On top of the features described above, the blivet-gui is embedable so any application using any toolkit with the XEmbed protocol support (Gtk, Qt,...) may use blivet-gui as a part of its GUI.
The application only started its history few months ago, is under heavy development now and will get new features in the next months (RAID, BTRFS), but even now it is a very nice and useful tool.
Suggestions, feature requests, bug reports and of course PATCHES ARE WELCOME! It is quite a simple Gtk application written in Python which makes it an easy target for everybody who misses something in the other storage management tools. Don't like Gtk? Text mode would be really, really useful too! Don't feel like adding new features and diving deep in blivet to implement them? The code always needs refactorization and cleanup!
I think everybody can submit patches for blivet-gui and I'm really looking forward to see the hundreds of patches from all those people that hate every storage management GUIs and tools that have every existed. Let's spend some time on pushing the Linux storage management further instead of just complaining!
.. [1] http://blog.vojtechtrefny.cz/blivet-gui
P.S. Do you know about any other mailing lists or individuals that may be interested in this announcement? Feel free to forward the message and spread the word!
This looks excellent, thank you. I look forward to the BTRFS integration, let me know if you have questions on that front. Super excited to see something non-gnome specific. Thanks,
Josef
anaconda-devel@lists.stg.fedoraproject.org