Re: [Xen-users] CentOS 4.5 on SLES10SP1 no disk

[Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel@xxxxxxxxx>]

Henning Sprang wrote:
> Scott Serr wrote:
>   
> > I have a server running SLES10SP1 with Xen enabled.  I am able to fire
> > off SLED10 installs inside Xen VMs just fine.
> >
> > I need to run (3) CentOS 4.5 VMs on it.
> >
> > CentOS kernel is not creating block devices for hd or iso image. any ideas?
> >
> > It doesn't seem to care if there is this line in my config file:
> >
> > disk = [ 'file:/export/home/CentOS-4.5-x86_64-binDVD.iso,hdc,r' ]
> >     
> Hmm, you're trying to boot an ISO in paravirtual mode?
>
> AFAIK this isn't so easy as one would assume when having used other
> virtualization technologies before.
>
> If at all, you can _maybe_ expect it work halfways nice with HVM.
>
> But you might rather try bootstrapping centos with yum, as described
> here:
> http://faiwiki.informatik.uni-koeln.de/index.php/FAI_multi-distribution#bootstrapping_the_base_images__for_other_distributions
> (this is tested on Debian, it might or might not work on SuSE, I heard
> various reports on success and failure on other distributions).
>
>   
My experience with this approach is that yum hangs doing this on CentOS 
4 and CentOS 5, on the "touch" commands run by various "%post" RPM 
function. You may need to set a lockfile with your build script, and set 
a little monitor widget to slap such touch processes in the head. Once 
you have a base minimum OS to your flavor, set it aside in a tarball for 
starting new configurations.
Or, if you're a complete weasel, you use the "mock" tool from Fedora 
Core to build full chroot cages, run "mock init", and do your upgrades 
inside the mock-built chroot.
> Or, you might search the web - I used to know where I found this, but
> have it not available now - there is a howto on how to start anaconda
> inside a domU to make the installation, that should work with SuSE, too.
>
> Take care to give enough(I don't know a number, a good guess is 256 if
> on doubt) memory to the VM, otherwise Anaconda will likely hang in an
> undefined state without any error message.
>   
For CentOS 5, I find 512 works well. CentOS 4 was quite happy with 256: 
I haven't looked at the exact difference.
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