Re: [Xen-users] General question on running guests from installed OS

[Philipp Jäggi <philipp.jaggi@xxxxxxx>]

Hello Srini

Wrote an mail to Fedora Xen mailing
list, but I think they kicked it out. But it included some answers to the
questions you have. So I've pasted the mail below... 

Hope this helps you a little bit.


bye Philipp


====================================================
beginning of the email ===========================================================


Dear Robert

First of all, I've had the same questions
and problems as you have now. This style of none documentation by the fedora
team is just a shame for the whole open source community! Probably Jeremy
Katz is too busy by meeting his new board members friends, so that he has
no more time to write just a little documentation with explanations, not
just a unusable mini mini howto.

What the big problem is behind the FC5
and Xen implementation is, that the xen guys at fedora have no idea what
SELinux is doing. So, finally they made an implementation of xen and SELinux
that is not usable. If you don't want to spend two weeks configuring your
SELinux, you have to decide, if you use in future SELinux or Xen (By the
way, the same issues you have with httpd and SELinux).

So my personal proposal is, that you
just disable SELinux wherever you find it on your FC5 installation. After
disabling SELinux (you have to reboot so that everything works fine, =>
Oh I like this old nice M$ Win95 style of system management) you can use
your xen config as you posted in your mail.

With the xenguest-install.py script
you can't install FC4 or another distribution, because the FC5 guys made
an adaptation of the anaconda system installer. By the way, this is a nice
feature, because you can now kickstart your FC5 installation.

If you want to install a new non FC5
guest, do it in the old style. Create your devices with LVM and perform
a yum groupinstall with --installdir=yourdevice.

As you can see, Fedora Core 5 is a typical
example for bad IT Management. They tried to do a lot of thing in a short
time. So several teams worked on different things and now, nothing really
fits together. The whole implementation of the SELinux is a disaster. So
for professional use, you have to go back to Fedora Core 4. Also because
the oracle stuff is not working with the new glibc (it's not possible to
start the listener... :-(). I by myself have to use FC5, because I need
to kickstart my xen installation and need apache 2.2. If you don't need
those features, use CentOS or the original RHES.

Hope I gave you the right hints.


bye Philipp



===============================================
Philipp Jäggi
SNCT Sandweiler
bp 23
L-5230 Sandweiler

+352 35'72'14'342

"Robert Mortimer" <rmortimer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: fedora-xen-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx

04/18/2006 04:22 PM

To	<fedora-xen@xxxxxxxxxx>
cc
Subject	[Fedora-xen] Running FC4 on FC5

I am attempting to run an FC4 image on an FC5 machine
I have prepped the image as per the FC4 quick start
my xen config is as follows

kernel ="/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.13-1.1532_FC4xenU"
memory = 100
name = "vm01"
vcpus = 1
vif= ['mac=FE:FD:25:63:74:49']
disk = [ 'file:/root/VM/fedora.img,sda1,w' ]
root = "/dev/sda1"
extra = "ro selinux=0 3"

All I get is 

# xm create vm01
Using config file "vm01".
Error: Error creating domain: (22, 'Invalid argument')
Has anyone got a simple 1 NIC guest config for FC4 on FC5

I see that the new FC5 uses
An init image as part of the boot
A python based boot loader
and a python based install script

Is there any way to hack this lot to do an install like the FC5/FC5 one?
How are the init images built?
Will the new installer do other guest OS's in the future?

Robert

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Fedora-xen mailing list
Fedora-xen@xxxxxxxxxx
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-xen


====================================================
end of the email ===========================================================


===============================================
Philipp Jäggi
SNCT Sandweiler
bp 23
L-5230 Sandweiler

+352 35'72'14'342

"Srinivasan S" <ssrini@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

04/19/2006 06:39 AM

To	xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
cc
Subject	[Xen-users] General question on running guests from installed OS

Hi

First of all apologies for making all of you read this long email.  I
have posted to multiple lists to get my setup running.  Inspite of
enthusiastic help I have not got it running yet and hence this fundamental
doubt.

I had a system running FC4 and Xen 2.x.  The same system had normal
installations of Suse and Ubuntu.  I had a running setup wherin I
started xen0 in FC4 and was able to run the installed Suse and Ubuntu as
guests within FC4.  (This worked perfectly and I was able to connect
to the guests using both RealVNC and FreeNX.)

I have now upgraded to FC and have been attempting to get the same setup
running.  I first tried with the official Xen tarballs.  Not
successful, I then tried yesterday with the FC5 xen kernels.  No success.
 The problem in both cases is that Suse and Ubuntu guests load but
virtual networking does not work.  Only lo interface is up.  On
the main FC5 xen0 domain, I am able to see vifx.x being added as and when
a guest boots up, but the guest itself is without an interface.

Various searches on Google finally got me one hint on loading module xennet
(for FC5) which I did in modprobe.conf.  Same result.

Search on web got me guides to load guests from images, starting guest
installs from fedora, debian etc but could not find any info on running
already installed linux distros within Xen.  The closet was in the
xen manual which explains how to make an image of an installed linux distro
and then running the image within xen.

Question:  Is what Iam trying to achieve possibly with Xen 3.x (since
it worked with 2.x) ?  If yes can anyone help ?  My guest config
file is a very simple one :

kernel = << Tried both the xen kernel and the FC5 xenU kernel >>
memory = 100
name = "suseguest"
vif= ['mac=aa:00:10:00:00:10, bridge=xenbr0, ip=192.168.2.2']
Also tried vif= ['']
gateway = "192.168.1.1"
netmask = "255.255.255.0"
disk = ['phy:hdc3,hdc3,w']
Also tried disk = ['file:/dev/hdc3,hdc3,w']
root = "/dev/hdc3 rw"

Please note that OpenSUSE is installed on /dev/hdc3

All help is appreciated in resolving this.

Thanks and Best Regards
Srini

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