RE: [Xen-users] Another begginer

["Petersson, Mats" <Mats.Petersson@xxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
> [mailto:xen-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
> Gilberto Martins
> Sent: 05 March 2007 17:14
> To: xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Xen-users] Another begginer
> 
> Hi again folks.
> 
> Just to answer two same questions:
> Petersson:
> > That probably depends quite a bit on what you actually want 
> to do with
> > your Dom0
> Anuj Bhatt:
> > It depends on your specific needs.
> 
> I want a system to practice conectivity among different OSes. There
> will be no production at all, just many tests that should normally
> require different computers, interconnected to each other. There I
> will combine Mandriva, OpenSuse, Debian, Slackware, FreeBSD, NetBSD
> and Windows (98/XP2k series), each one performing different services
> (email, proxy, firewalls, etc). I will often make many changes to each
> one of then, and to start a new set of tests, I will need a brand new
> installation of each OS. Like in VMWare (I think), all I will need to
> do is copy the file of a Virtual Computer over the modified one to
> have a whole new one again. My studies will need Internet access, for
> ocasionally updating some packages, thus I guess all of the host OS
> will need a connection to the real network interfaces.

Yes, you can just copy an "original image" from some "backup" whenever
you've "destroyed" the guest-OS, that's how we test things here quite a
lot. 

As long as you have plenty of diskspace, it works fine. 

>From what you describe, it doesn't seem like you should have to worry
about "which Linux" - I'd pick one that you're familiar with and try
that. If it doesn't seem to work, ask here, and you'll probably get two
types of answers:
- Just change to XXX (where XXX is Fedora, SuSE or Debian)
- You need to install package YYY. 

Very few distributions are "doomed" when it comes to running Xen inside
them (on top, below or whatever you want to call it). 
> 
> But I don't want to keep using a free version of VMWare, since XEN
> seems to be farly more fancy and challenging. Dreams of a wannabe
> "bits polisher", if this make any sense... :)
> 
> The sad point is that my computer is a poor and weak P4 512MRam, and
> not a Pacifica or a VT. So, I wish to have the lightest host OS I can
> for XEN, since it will make no work, but playing the DOM0 part in this
> "film". If it is possible that this host OS lacks any graphical
> interface, that should be better. At least, this is my guess.

That pretty much precludes being able to run Windows on your
Xen-machine, as you do need "HVM", i.e. AMD-V or VT to be able to run
OS's that you don't have source-code for. 

Also, if you wish to run more than one or two guests, I would expect
that you need more than 512MB of RAM, (unless you spend a lot of effort
stripping each guest down to a minimum before you get "serious"). Dom0
itself needs at least 96-128MB - I run 256 "to be safe" (also useful
when I decide to do "emacs vm-save-file" or "objdump -d xen-syms > blah;
emacs blah" - those files can be a "a bit big").

Also, if your intention is to test for example "RedHat version X" in the
form supplied by RedHat, you'll want a machine with HVM, as for the
para-virtual model, the guest-OS has to be a xenified kernel, which is
different from what for example your customers (or "most people") would
run on the machine. 

Of course, an option that already works on your existing machine is to
use VMWare - as the VMWare solution uses a "binary translation" method
of essentially stepping through the code and replacing bits of it with
"traps" to the hypervisor when necessary. So you don't need a "special"
processor to run VMWare. 

> 
> I am reading the links you all sent me, and I will try not to make
> obvious questions. But for now, I really need the kick-starting to it.
> Hope I can do it by myself afterwords.
> 
> > Finally, in my setup, I use SDL over SSH with X-windows 
> forwarding - so
> > the display of my Xen-guest is displayed on a different machine than
> > where it runs - it works just fine. So I can run MS Windows 
> on machine
> > "svm" and view it on machine "devel" - I like that because 
> I can have
> > all my development windows visible at the same time as I 
> look at what
> > the guest is doing, rather than switching back and forth across the
> > machines.
> 
> That really seems a killer item !!! I should learn to do that also,
> seems really cool and functional. Need to learn Windows first :)

It's not difficult, you need to use ssh with the -X option (or add
"ForwardX11=yes" in a file called ~/.ssh/config). So on "devel", you do
"ssh -X svm", and then anything that uses X windows on SVM will appear
on the "devel" machine. That includes the Xen HVM window from either SDL
or VNC - and it's got nothing to do with learning Windows in itself...
;-)

--
Mats
> 
> But for now, I want this baked off my begginer's oven.
> 
> Once more, thanks for your help.
> 
> Glberto Martins
> 
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