Importing images — layout and per-vendor recipes

The importer is image-aware: it walks the four addon directories EVE-NG ships, materialises each as a <kind>/<image_key>/ tree under the destination, and emits a structured manifest entry per file.

Source → destination mapping

Kind	EVE-NG / PNETLab source	nova-ve destination
QEMU	/opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/<vendor-ver>/*.qcow2, cdrom.iso, etc.	/var/lib/nova-ve/images/qemu/<vendor-ver>/
Dynamips	/opt/unetlab/addons/dynamips/<image>.image	/var/lib/nova-ve/images/dynamips/<image>/<image>.image
IOL	/opt/unetlab/addons/iol/bin/<image>.bin (+ iourc)	/var/lib/nova-ve/images/iol/<image>/<image>.bin (+ iourc)
Docker	/opt/unetlab/addons/docker/<image>/Dockerfile (build context)	/var/lib/nova-ve/images/docker/<image>/image.txt (marker)

Anything outside these four addon trees is ignored. To slim down a long-running import, rsync only the addon subdirectories you actually want before invoking the importer.

QEMU images

Each vendor directory (/opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/<vendor-ver>/) is treated as one image. Every file inside it is copied to the matching qemu/<vendor-ver>/ destination — .qcow2 boot disks, cdrom.iso install media, and any vendor-specific helper files. The destination preserves filenames byte-for-byte so a QEMU-launched node sees the same disk geometry it saw under EVE-NG.

Boot-disk precedence (per-directory, used by template adapters to know which disk to attach as boot media):

1. cdrom.iso
2. virtioa.qcow2
3. hda.qcow2
4. The lexicographically-first *.qcow2

The chosen boot disk is recorded in the manifest as meta.boot_disk on the imported entry.

Dynamips images

Each *.image file under addons/dynamips/ becomes a single-file image: it is copied to dynamips/<image_stem>/<image>.image. Non-.image files in that directory are skipped.

IOL images

Each *.bin file under addons/iol/bin/ becomes one image. The iourc license file is copied alongside every IOL image if it exists in the source bin directory. The importer records meta.iourc_present (true / false) on every IOL entry; entries with iourc_present: false will not boot at runtime — re-import or hand-copy the license file before instantiating an IOL node.

Docker images

Docker is the only kind that does not byte-copy. Each addons/docker/<image>/ directory containing a Dockerfile becomes a build unit: the importer runs docker build against the source context and writes a single image.txt marker file at docker/<image>/image.txt recording the resulting tag (nova-ve-<image>:latest by default).

Implications:

• The host running the importer must have a usable Docker daemon. The default install.sh provisioner installs Docker, so this just works on a fresh nova-ve host.
• Re-running the importer on an unchanged build context will re-trigger the Docker build (the daemon's layer cache makes this cheap, but it is not skipped at the importer level the way file copies are).

Verifying what landed

# Tree-view per kind:
tree -L 2 /var/lib/nova-ve/images/

# Just the QEMU images, by key:
ls /var/lib/nova-ve/images/qemu/

# Show manifest entries for one vendor-version:
jq '.imported[] | select(.dst | contains("/qemu/vyos-1.4/"))' \
  /var/lib/nova-ve/import-manifest.json

# Show every IOL image that landed without a license file:
jq '.imported[] | select(.dst | contains("/iol/")) | select(.meta.iourc_present == false)' \
  /var/lib/nova-ve/import-manifest.json

If a destination already matches the source sha256, the entry lands in manifest.skipped[] instead. Use --force to overwrite mismatched destinations.