Installation procedure (was: Re: [Xen-users] Could not open channel to DOM0)

[Sascha Retzki <sretzki@xxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jul 06, 2005 at 09:22:49AM +0200, Ernst Bachmann wrote:
> Hi,
> On Wednesday 06 July 2005 08:11, Rigas Wendel wrote:
> 
> > At the moment the only disk I configured here ist the CDROM. For a boot
> > test this should be enough, I suppose.
> 
> A CD isn't directly bootable, it requires (depending on its type) some tricks 
> by the bios to boot (like loading a floppy image from CD and creating a 
> virtual fdd for it)
> 

Let us elaborate that in a greater detail, because many people probably
want to install into some file or alike, or otherwisely want to just boot
some install-medium and install from there:

If you set a phy:, the raw block device (NetBSD <-> Linux: /dev/rwd0d <->
/dev/hda (assuming the first disc is on Primary master) isn't simply
booted, right?

So you need, despite a xenU "install" kernel, a lot more than just
specifying a phy: with your CD-ROM drive?

I still want to install OSes that I want to use in Xen from Xen ;-)

So what/how is a phy: actually booted? It is not at all booted, right?
It is just that the kernel= sees that device and is told to boot that.
As most install-media on CD use El Torito, which in turn is a 2.88 MB
floppy emulation (?), how could this ever work? My answer is: Not at
all, the Installmedia must be completly redesigned for a xen-installation.

Right up to this?

So the way to go(tm) Would be not to use a "ramdisk" or alike with all
userland tools, but all binaries (/bin, /sbin, etc) have to be on the
root of the CD. (Plan9 does that and it works this way). As the userland
does not have to be recompiled for Xen, this would obviously also work
for native installations. 

So we just have to convince the Xen-loving OSes to do it this way
and it would work? Or any other thoughts?

> Try to extract the boot image from the CD, and pass the CD drive and the boot 
> image to xen. Maybe you also need to extract an initrd or something from 

Is it a NetBSD-CD? A comparable system is used, but I don't know how you can
"extract" it, actually.

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