[Xen-devel] How is a file-backed FreeBSD filesystem mounted for a FreeBSD XenU?

["David Schmidt" <dschmidt@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I work in a shop that is predominately FreeBSD.  However, Xen offers a number 
of benefits over running FreeBSD jails for virtual hosts.

We recently came upon a requirement for a Linux server to run some commercial 
software and I managed to get enough time with it before the commercial 
software arrived to install Fedora Core 4 and Xen.  So now I have a Xen0 
running FC4, a XenU running FC3 (because the vendor wouldn't verify the product 
could run under FC4 <sigh>).  The commercial software is installed on the XenU 
instance and appears to be running fine.  The system is not in production use 
while the software is being configured.

Now, since the system isn't in production yet I'd like to show a FreeBSD XenU 
instance running so that I can show the rest of the staff to convince them of 
the benefits of running Xen servers, even if they insist on continuing to run 
FreeBSD for all servers.

I've examined the XenDemo CD and the FreeBSD filesystem and XenU there, but for 
the life of me I cannot figure out how the FreeBSD filesystem (on the CD as 
/freebsd.fs) is handed to the FreeBSD XenU kernel to be mounted.

I've been able to mount the /root.fs filesystem under FC4 ("mount -o loop 
root.fs /debian.root"), but that doesn't work for the /freebsd.fs file, even 
using the "-t ufs -o ufstype=44bsd" options.  I also don't know how to mount it 
on our FreeBSD systems.

So, I have the following questions:

1) How is /freebsd.fs hooked to the FreeBSD XenU on the XenDemo CD?  If I know 
how this is done I can do a quick demo of a FreeBSD XenU on our Linux FC4 
system.

2) An alternative method would be to use an NFS mounted root filesystem served 
from one of our FreeBSD servers.  The easiest and quickest filesystem to use 
would be the /freebsd.fs or Kip Macy's mdroot file system from 
http://www.fsmware.com/xenofreebsd/5.3/.  How do you mount a file-back 
filesystem under FreeBSD?

Thank you much,

David Schmidt
NOC Analyst - Northwest Open Access Network
dschmidt@xxxxxxxxxx  1-866-662-6380

There are 10 types of people in this world.  Those that understand binary and 
those that do not.



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