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Re: [Xen-users] About installing Virtual Machines in the same hdd partit

To: xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Xen-users] About installing Virtual Machines in the same hdd partition
From: "Fajar A. Nugraha" <fajar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 15:42:26 +0700
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Miguel Gómez wrote:

The problem comes when I thing about installing a new Virtual Machine, I would not like to create a new partition in my hard disk to store the new virtual machine, what I would like to do is to have the same filesystems being shared by all the running Virtual Machines, plus Xen. Can I do this?

Short answer : No.

Long answer:
Linux requires some part of filesystem (/var, /tmp, etc.) to be available read-write. Generally, you cannot (and should not) mount a partition (or any block device, or even loopback file system) read-write twice (or more) at the same time because it will cause inconsistency and data loss. You can, however, mount a block device read-only on multiple domains for some parts of file system (namely /usr). See http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/readmes/user/user.html#SECTION02330000000000000000

If you don't want to create another partition, you can use file-backed VBDs, or use LVM (recommended).

Regards,

Fajar



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