[Xen-users] Unable to boot Xen (3.0.2) on Dell Poweredge 1855

["Randolph Nethers" <grnconsulting@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a really long email...my apologies.

Hardware platform: Dell Poweredge 1855 (blade), Dual Xeon 2.8 GHz; 12 MB 
RAM; PERC 4/IM; mirrored 73 GB U320 SCSI; qLogic 2312 PCI Fibre Channel 
HBAs.
OS: (currently) CentOS 4.3, gcc 3.4.5

Software: Xen 3.0.2-2

Attempting to boot off local SCSI RAID (mirror)...not the SAN.

 I am more of a Solaris person, so forgive me if I don't know all I should 
about Linux. I'm learning, but a long, long way from guru status.
(I have tried using Red Hat Enterprise 3 update 7, and 4 update 3 with the 
same results.)
 I installed Xen from source, with no problems, following the instructions 
in the README. (I had to build the bridge-utils software from source, but 
the other needed software is included.) I did the following to install from 
the source.
# make KERNELS="linux-2.6-xen0 linux-2.6-xenU" world
# make install

 This did exactly what I expected, including placing the following files 
and links in the /boot directory:
# ls -aF /boot/*xen*
config-2.6.16-xen      vmlinux-syms-2.6.16-xen  xen-3.0.2-2.gz  xen.gz@
initrd-2.6.16-xen.img  vmlinuz-2.6.16-xen       xen-3.0.gz@     
xen-syms-3.0.2-2
System.map-2.6.16-xen  vmlinuz-2.6-xen@         xen-3.gz@

(I did create the initrd-2.6.16-xen.img file myself.(more on this later))

 The Xen entry in my grub.conf file is as follows:

title Xen 3.0.2-2 / XenLinux 2.6
       root (hd0,0)
       kernel /xen-3.0.gz dom0_mem=262144
       module /vmlinuz-2.6-xen root=LABEL=/ ro
       module /initrd-2.6.16-xen.img

 When I tried booting from the Xen kernel with the grub config:

title Xen 3.0.2-2 / XenLinux 2.6
       kernel /xen-3.0.gz dom0_mem=262144
       module /vmlinuz-2.6-xen root=LABEL=/ ro

as suggested by the documentation, I observe a kernel panic with the message

Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

I assume this is because there is no driver support for the PERC 4/IM in the 
Xen kernel.
 So, I thought to create a initrd file, to provide support for the PERC 
4/IM. I first had to use the command "depmod 2.6.16-xen" because there was 
no modules.dep file in /lib/modules/2.6.16-xen. When I attempted to create 
the initrd file from the 2.6.16-xen directory, it failed because there were 
no kernel module files for the qla2300 card.
 So, I copied the files listed in the modules.dep file for the 2.6.9-34-EL 
kernel that comes with CentOS 4.3 to the corresponding 
/lib/modules/2.6.16-xen locations.
/lib/modules/2.6.9-34.EL/kernel/drivers/scsi/qla2xxx/qla2300.ko: 
/lib/modules/2.6.9-34.EL/kernel/drivers/scsi/qla2xxx/qla2xxx.ko 
/lib/modules/2.6.9-34.EL/kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_transport_fc.ko 
/lib/modules/2.6.9-34.EL/kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_mod.ko
I edited the modules.dep line in /lib/modules/2.6.16-xen to read as follows:

/lib/modules/2.6.16-xen/kernel/drivers/scsi/qla2xxx/qla2300.ko: 
/lib/modules/2.6.16-xen/kernel/drivers/scsi/qla2xxx/qla2xxx.ko 
/lib/modules/2.6.16-xen/kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_transport_fc.ko 
/lib/modules/2.6.16-xen/kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_mod.ko
I then was able to create the initrd file, and called it 
"initrd-2.6.16-xen.img". When I boot with the grub.conf what includes the 
initrd, we get past finding the root directory, so I guess we now have 
support for the RAID controller, but now I get another kernel panic. I have 
not been able to write down much of what is on the screen, except the kernel 
does not sync, and it cannot find label /.
Oh, the /etc/fstab file reads:

# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
LABEL=/local            /local                  ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
LABEL=SWAP-sda3         swap                    swap    defaults        0 0

Help? I know copying ko files was probably pretty cludgy. Is there a better 
way? If I were to try to include support for the PERC 4/IM and qLogic 
hardware into the Xen kernel, how would I do that? I am something of a 
newbie, so perhaps there is a "HOWTO" out there that could help?
In advance, many, many thanks.

Randy



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