[Mark == maw48@xxxxxxxxxx on Wed, 15 Dec 2004 17:29:20 +0000]
Mark> I was working on [XenDemoCD] but never finished it off. We
Mark> weren't so worried about it for Xen 2.0 since hard drive
Mark> installs and setting up test VMs are now much easier than they
Mark> were. [...] Basically a time thing.
Ok, thanks for the answer. I had no problem getting Xen 2.0 running
on a machine, so your instincts are correct there.
There are other reasons for liking bootable CDs, and frozen images in
general, however. My current interest in a bootable CD is for a
higher-reliability production server. I don't want corruption or
accidental/intentional dom0 changes to create problems whereby every
VM has problems starting.
If the box instead booted off a CD with a frozen network
configuration, and then auto-discovered and auto-started VMs, then
worse case, a reboot of the physical box should get back to the same
state, repeatedly. And creating a 2nd box that worked the same would
be completely trivial.
Perhaps I'm thinking more about Xen "appliances" than I am "demo" at
this point, but there's overlap in the ideas, which I think would be
very cool. 1 CD (well maybe DVD) for "Xen with Debian" and "Xen with
RedHat" as grub options would be grand.
There's room for a lot of different perspectives on what a "bootable
Xen CD" should look like. Fortunately, multiple bootable views can be
supported on 1 CD.
There's at least these dimensions to consider about any XenCD design:
- light distro (ttylinux, damn small linux) or fat distro (Fedora,
Debian, Knoppix, etc)?
- RedHat, Debian/Knoppix, Gentoo, LFS, Yet Another Branch?
- graphical/desktop dom0 or headless/server dom0 oriented?
- "Xen demo" oriented or production oriented?
- autostart example or production domains?
- frozen config or post-boot configuration based on on-disk files or
network parameters?
- what xenolinux/initrd/rootfs combinations available for kicking
off additional example/production livecds?
- run from ram or run from iso fs?
Comments about people's preferences would be welcome.
I have my own perspective, as does every other live cd creator, so
it's unlikely that whatever I end up with would match what others are
expecting. That's a reasonable sign that a "Xen live cd
builder"/modular approach or a script instead of an iso may be a
better initial goal.
Mark> The Xen 1.2 CD is based on RH 9 and includes the tools /
Mark> instructions required to rebuild it. We could supply you with
Mark> a copy of this image, or you could try using a more up to date
Mark> and less hacked (our demo CD lacked things like the RPM
Mark> database) image.
I would appreciate a copy of the image and/or the tools directory. I
couldn't seem to clone the 1.2 branch out of bkbits. Shouldn't be
strictly necessary for me to create one, but it's always good to see
other's examples.
-- jared@xxxxxxxxxxx
"Tiger gotta hunt. Bird gotta fly.
Man gotta sit and wonder why, why, why.
Tiger gotta sleep. Bird gotta land.
Man gotta tell himself he understand." -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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