Re: [Xen-users] Help for a confused newbie

[Marcus Brown <marcusbrutus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi!

M. Khalid Khan wrote:

> Thanks Dan for your reply. Here are a few more questions / concerns:
>
>>> proceed. I'd like set up a  couple logical volumes ( is LVM there on
>>> the demo CD ) and install a couple  of different distros and run them
>>
>> The XenLinux kernel on the demo CD does indeed have LVM support, but if
>> you're going to be installing things on disk anyway I suggest you
>> install proper Xen rather than trying to run from the demo CD.
>
>
> I'd definitely like to install dom0 on the disk but I don't want to
> install any bloated distibution that comes with everything under the
> sun and requires many GB of disk space, tons of memory and lots of cpu
> cycles. In my opinion dom0 should only have the things needed to run
> Xen. I tried Xenophilia but that's still a work in progress. Is there
> any other distro you can recomend for this purpose ?
>
I'm successfully using Debian  with LVM on my server.
With Debian you just install what you need.
My dom0 is LVM-enabled and exports LVM partions the the domU(s).
Memory allocated to dom0 is 128MB (probably needs to be reduced later;))
My domUs are MailServer and WebServer, 64MB and 80MB RAM respectively.
More domUs are in the process of being built (inc. bluetooth proxy
server for ipaq web browsing)

>> At the moment the only sensible place to run an X server is in dom0.
>> However, the demo CD has guest domains start Xvnc, so a VNC client
>> running on the X server in dom0 can show you the graphical output of
>> each domU. This is a little fiddly to set up but might be useful
>> depending on what you want to do.
>
>
> You said "At the moment", does it mean there is a better solution
> under development ? Can you give some pointers to it? I browsed
> realvnc site to get an idea about it. From what I can gather it seems
> to be something to be able to view a desktop remotely on another
> machine but the documentation didn't say that you don't run X on the
> machine being accessed, may be I missed it. Anyway not running X on
> user domains will save some resources.
> All I'm trying to do is to set up a development environment where I'll
> have a database server, an application/web server and a development
> machine. This last one has to have GUI the first two may not.
>
At the moment I believe that there isn't proper support for agp in domU,
(I'm under the impression this will change in Xen 3.0)
so the solution is to run a VNC server in the domU (which runs X without
a display),
and view it from dom0 using a VNC client (ie. using X WITH a display!).
Personally prefer running freenx (nomachine.org) for a number of reasons
including speed and encryption. However it can be harder to setup, esp.
if you're not running Debian! :)

Using your requirements you could probably do this:
dom0 - running X with VNC viewer:
domU1 - Database server
domU2 - application/web server
domU3 - development machine running X with VNC server

>>
>> Have fun experimenting with Xen.
>
>
> I'm having fun and I sincerely appreciate all the work that you guys
> are putting into it.
> Thanks
> Khalid 

Yep, Xen is a fantastic invention!
(Although the concept can be hard to explain at times! lol)

Marcus.

_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users