WARNING - OLD ARCHIVES

This is an archived copy of the Xen.org mailing list, which we have preserved to ensure that existing links to archives are not broken. The live archive, which contains the latest emails, can be found at http://lists.xen.org/
   
 
 
Xen 
 
Home Products Support Community News
 
   
 

xen-users

next chapter in domUbuntu was:Re: [Xen-users] Xen newbie question

Subject: next chapter in domUbuntu was:Re: [Xen-users] Xen newbie question
From: "Eric S. Johansson" <esj@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 11:23:52 -0500
Cc: xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Michael Mey <michael.mey@xxxxxx>
Delivery-date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 16:25:17 +0000
Envelope-to: www-data@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In-reply-to: <439AFC43.9020904@xxxxxxxxxx>
List-help: <mailto:xen-users-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=help>
List-id: Xen user discussion <xen-users.lists.xensource.com>
List-post: <mailto:xen-users@lists.xensource.com>
List-subscribe: <http://lists.xensource.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xen-users>, <mailto:xen-users-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=subscribe>
List-unsubscribe: <http://lists.xensource.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xen-users>, <mailto:xen-users-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=unsubscribe>
References: <200512071554.28244.edv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> <4396FB5D.5050602@xxxxxxxxxx> <200512071636.34762.michael.mey@xxxxxx> <439AFC43.9020904@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sender: xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
User-agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (Windows/20051025)
Eric S. Johansson wrote:

when I come back from shoveling snow, I'll try making a cp level copy of the partition onto a new straight file image.

long story short, I was unable to extract the ubuntu partition created using qemu and make a working domU. There's something about me and partition math that just doesn't seem to work with file based partitioned disk images.


so in rereading the documentation I saw the trick of copying files from the dom0 image into a domU partition. I did and it worked... mostly. I believe that this technique or very close variant will work for any Linux distribution and let you get to a working domU image relatively quickly. The majority of the time will be spent waiting for qemu to do its stuff.

the rough sequence is:

Build OS image in qemu
mount partition from qemu OS image (I used lomount which is now apparently included in xen 3.0)

cp -a qemu_partition file_image
cp -a domU_modules file_image
fix /etc/network/interfaces for your local network
edit /etc/modules for only the modules you need
edit inittab to remove... (haven't worked this part out quite right yet)
create your domU.xm
xm create domU.xm -c

(puzzlement number one: why is there a 20-30 second delay on initializing CPU #1. I'm also only seeing one CPU. Do I need to do something different with domU. Will xen manage the CPU's for the domU's?

puzzlement number two: why do I get "couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console" message? Searching says it's something related to the console set up in inittab but I haven't puzzled it out yet)

You will probably get LVM and EVMS errors at this point.  Ignore them

Login using the account and password you created when installing via qemu.

turn off:
  LVM
  EVMS
  ntp
  ntpd
and maybe others.

Reboot the domU image and verify everything is operating correctly.

Now I haven't gone this far yet but this is my plan:

It seems to me that one could create new domU images by copying this baseline image into larger file or LVM based disks. It also strikes me that one should be able to create a relatively large LVM disk, dd the baseline image into it and then it resize the filesystem to match the LVM disk.

They both have challenges and I'm going to play with both. I know the simple copy will work so that may not be any advantage to the dd and resize except for satisfying one's alpha geek testosterone urges which I know none of us here suffer from.

If others could play with this model, I would greatly appreciate it. I want to make sure it works and then put it up on the wiki.

I must say, this wouldn't be such a problem if we could "boot" a domU from CD-ROM. ;-) I other hand, we only need to do this once in awhile and the qemu approach doesn't suck too badly as long as you are running on something faster than a Pentium III/500 megahertz laptop.

Thanks for the help folks and working out the bugs in this procedure would be a great contribution opportunity for the non-coding, reasonably sophisticated end-user.

---eric

_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>