Re: [Xen-devel] Installing Fedora Core 2 inside an unprivileged domain

[Luciano Miguel Ferreira Rocha <strange@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 12:32:26AM -0500, John L Griffin wrote:
> I am attempting to install Red Hat Fedora Core 2, inside an
> unprivileged Xen domain, using the FC2 distribution DVD.
> 
> Ian discusses some options for doing this in a message from 2004-11-07
> [ http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=9983779 ].
> I'm developing the "alternative approach" he discusses in the message.
> I've made some progress:
> 
>   1. Create a sparse file (see section 5.2 of Xen user's manual):
> 
>        dd if=/dev/zero of=fc2-install.img bs=1k seek=8388607 count=1
> 
>   2. Acquire the DVD ISO image (FC2-i386-DVD.iso, in my case), and
>      save it to a file locally.  Mount the image as a loopback device,
>      copy the file "initrd.img" from the DVD image, unmount the image:
> 
>        mkdir /mnt/loop
>        mount -oloop,ro FC2-i386-DVD.iso /mnt/loop
>        cp /mnt/loop/isolinux/initrd.img .
>        umount /mnt/loop
> 
>   3. Create a configuration file; the important fields to modify are
>      "ramdisk" (should point to initrd.img from above), "disk", and
>      "root".  Here are the entries I used:
> 
>        kernel  = "/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-xenU"
>        ramdisk = "/fc2-install/initrd.img"
>        memory  = 128
>        name    = "fc2-install"
>        disk    = [ 'file:/fc2-install/fc2-install.img,hda1,w',
>                    'file:/fc2-install/FC2-i386-DVD.iso,hdb1,r' ]
>        root    = "/dev/hdb1 ro ramdisk_size=8192 init=isolinux.bin"
> 
>   4. Start the unprivileged domain.
> 
>        xend start
>        xm create fc2-install.xen -c
> 
> The unprivileged domain starts, Linux starts to boot correctly, and a
> "Welcome to Fedora Core" message appears.  But, then a prompt asks "Do
> you have a driver disk?".  When I say "no", it asks what type of media
> contains the packages to be installed (Local CDROM, Hard drive, NFS
> image, FTP, HTTP), but selecting any of them brings up a "No driver
> found" prompt: "Unable to find any devices of the type needed for this
> installation type.  Would you like to manually select your driver or
> use a driver disk?"
> 
> And that's where I'm currently stuck.  None of the listed drivers for
> either disk-based or network-based installs appear to work.  My theory
> is that the initial boot is successful because Xen is loading the
> ramdisk, but in the next stage the installer can't find drivers for
> either the VBD or virtual network interface.  (See boot messages
> below.)
> 
> But this inability to find the drivers seems odd, since I expect the
> drivers for both to be compiled into the xenU kernel.  (Could the
> installer somehow be switching over to the kernel image on the DVD?)
> 
> So, any ideas on what to try to overcome this?  Rebuild the initrd
> image?  Create a driver disk?  Something much simpler?

The drivers work, but anaconda doesn't detect the partitions.

I gave up installing FC2 and Debian via the normal installers, and went
with debootstrap, but later I came across a option to anaconda to make
it work like the debootstrap. Try the --rootpath /path option.

I didn't try it for myself. Good luck.

Regards,
Luciano Rocha


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