Re: [Xen-users] XenU installs

[Mark Williamson <mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

What are you trying to install?  As Daniel said, in general installing from 
CD-ROMs will only work in HVM.

However, there are a number of possible options:

* Fedora / RHEL (and possibly SuSE?) can be installed paravirtualised from 
CD-ROM if you boot using the Xenified install kernel and initrd from the 
disk.
* If you have hardware virtualisation extensions, install in HVM mode then 
convert to paravirtualised by installing a Xenified kernel.
* Install from CD-ROM in Qemu, then convert to paravirtualised by installing a 
Xenified kernel.
* For Debian / Ubuntu installs you can just use debootstrap to build a 
filesystem in a directory tree.  debootstrap runs on non-debian distros, I 
think.
* There are other possibilities (e.g. I think RedHat's virt-manager can 
install RH (/ SuSE guests in future?) from network shares.

Would one of these work for you? (nb. Fedora / RHEL only support PAE hosts, so 
you need to have a PAE Xen installed).

It'd be kinda nice if there were a standardised spec for "how to boot an ISO 
in a paravirt VM".  This would require some kind of agreement between the 
distributors to do things in a uniform way, but it would move us closer to 
a "just works" type setup - surely a good thing.  It seems relatively 
unfortunate for the install procedure for each paravirt guest to be slightly 
different so that the user or tools has to understand those differences.

Cheers,
Mark

On Tuesday 05 June 2007, Andre Grove wrote:
> hello all,
>
> i've been messing around with Xen, and it seems that most HOWTOs
> document installs by using prebuilt images.
> i'm rather anal about my installs though, and i want to be able to
> boot CDs (or ISO images). i've tried the following config:
>
> kernel = "/boot/vmlinuz-2.6-xen"
> memory = 128
> name = "andre_test_01"
> cpus = "1" # leave to Xen to pick
> vif = [ 'bridge=xenbr0' ]
> disk = [ 'file:/xendisks/andre_test.img,sda1,w',
> 'file:/xendisks/andre_test_swap.img,sda2,w',
> 'file:/xendisks/install-isoS/install.iso,hdc,r' ]
> ramdisk = "/boot/initrd.img-2.6.16.33-xen"
> boot = "d"
>
> the boot = d is apparently used to boot the cdrom, but it doesn't work
> for me. i've tried copying the vmlinuz and initrd.
>
> does any one have any ideas?
>
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-- 
Dave: Just a question. What use is a unicyle with no seat?  And no pedals!
Mark: To answer a question with a question: What use is a skateboard?
Dave: Skateboards have wheels.
Mark: My wheel has a wheel!

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