Re: [Xen-users] IBM x445, anyone using it?

[Mark Williamson <mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > Just from the little bit you have shared, your problem has NOTHING to
> > do with hardware virtualization, unless you are trying to take a HVM
> > guest from one Xen box that supports VT, and trying to run it on a
> > different Xen box that does NOT support VT.
>
> It's just a fresh CentOS install with Virtualization because I wanted to
> try out Xen. 
>
> > Sounds more like a filesystem issue or something like that.
>
> I'm not sure that there is a problem, perhaps a little configuration which
> is not installed by default or such? 
>
> > Really, use virt-manager or YaST and install a paravirtualized guest
> > just to see if it works.  Besides, you have a running system, and a
> > running Dom0, so Xen works.  Dom0 is, in reality, just a
> > paravirtualized guest OS running on the hypervisor.
>
> That's exactly what I've tried and received the path error :).
> Using Virtual Machine Manager, I've tried to install a pre-configured ISO.
> It was simply what I had handy. I can try something else. Is there
> something I can try from the command line? I just want a basic Linux
> install, no servers, nothing for now. 
>
> > What does this mean?  You copied a working guest filesystem image to
> > your new Xen box, or you copied an install tree?  What OS are you
> > using for the Host?  What OS are you using for the guest?  How is your
> > install tree set up (file tree, ISO, or what?)
>
> It's an ISO of a pre-installed CentOS OS with qmail pre-configured along
> with other tools. Just had it handy when I first gave this a quick try. 

ISO usually refers to an image of a DVD/CD-ROM but it sounds like you're 
talking about an image of a hard drive, am I right?  Or are you using a 
custom CD-ROM or something like that?

You can't install a paravirtualised guest from a disk, it needs to be a net 
install, with you supplying a location of an online (possibly a local mirror) 
RPM repository.

Alternatively if you're copying existing hard drive images directly 
into /var/lib/xen/images and then trying to boot them, I suppose there could 
be some kind of SELinux labelling issue going on here...

> I didn't ask about this but I think it's in the thread somewhere. Either
> way, if I can use the x445 for non fully virtualized machines, that still
> would be cool. It would allow me to shut down a couple dozen low use boxes,
> virtualizing them along with their storage on SAN.

You should be able to run PV domains on them without too much bother.  As Jeff 
notes, if dom0 is booted successfully everything *should* work OK once the 
setup issues are resolved.

Since your hardware *definitely* should support PV guests OK based on what 
we've seen, I think we need to go back-to-basics a bit in debugging this.  In 
addition to my questions above, it would be helpful to have a more specific 
idea of the steps you have taken during the attempted installation of this 
guest, so that we can see what went wrong and how.

> I'll look around for a guest which is known to easily work
> para-virtualized. If you know of one, please let me know in the meantime.
> Thanks.

CentOS > 4.5 should work OK as a PV guest, as should Fedora releases for the 
past few years.  You ought to be able to network install them in virt-manager 
fairly straightforwardly once we've figured out what your current problem is.

Cheers,
Mark

-- 
Push Me Pull You - Distributed SCM tool (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~maw48/pmpu/)

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