Re: [Xen-users] IBM x445, anyone using it?

["Jeff Lane" <sundowner225@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 7:18 PM, isplist@xxxxxxxxxxxx
<isplist@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The machines I have are all 8-way XEON's. I do not have any clustered or 
> extended to 16-way.
> Someone was telling me in another thread that these machines are not, might 
> not, be Xen compatible machines.

Yep.  The max for a single node x445 is 8 processors, no dual core
support that I am aware of.  To get 16 procs, you need to take two of
them, cable them and then it MAY work, or it may not.  To be honest, I
never had the hardware to try, and the idea was kind of scary.  The
multi-noding seems to work far better in the newer IBM systesm like
x3950 and x3950-M2.

I never tested Xen on them either.  They were End of Lifed before Xen
showed up in RHEL and SLES.  Also, to the best of my recollection,
they were 32bit only boxes.  And, as I said before, there is no
hardware virutalization support on those processors or BIOS.

>> Nothing to change (in BIOS). You're gonna need much newer hardware if you 
>> want
>> HVM.  The x445 is pretty old and the processors and BIOS on those
>> systems do not support hardware virtualization.
>
> I do have VirtMan running, it see's dom0, 16 VCPU's, 8GB memory.
> However, when I try to install a guest, I am not getting anywhere.

Have you tried installing from scratch, using virt-manager (in
RHEL/Fedora) or using YaST (in SLES/SuSE)?

Just from the little bit you have shared, your problem has NOTHING to
do with hardware virtualization, unless you are trying to take a HVM
guest from one Xen box that supports VT, and trying to run it on a
different Xen box that does NOT support VT.

Sounds more like a filesystem issue or something like that.

Really, use virt-manager or YaST and install a paravirtualized guest
just to see if it works.  Besides, you have a running system, and a
running Dom0, so Xen works.  Dom0 is, in reality, just a
paravirtualized guest OS running on the hypervisor.
>
> I copied a distro to a location on the xen host.
> I went through the new virtual server configuration.
> The default install path is; /var/lib/xen/images/mynewinstall.img
> When I try to install, I keep getting; Invalid install location

What does this mean?  You copied a working guest filesystem image to
your new Xen box, or you copied an install tree?  What OS are you
using for the Host?  What OS are you using for the guest?  How is your
install tree set up (file tree, ISO, or what?)


> I thought I had the right hardware but the Fully Virtualized option isn't 
> available, it's grayed out.

Again, as I said before, you will not have Fully Virtualized abilities
on the x445, it does not support the hardware virtualization code, and
I am almost sure that it won't even support the processors that have
HVM code on them (Though that is just a guess, so YMMV there).

And to answer your other questions... virtualbox may work, but it's
rather new, and I've never tried it myself.  VMWare MAY work,
especially as the older VMWare versions (Server and ESX) are 32 bit
RHEL based and do not AFAIK require VT code on the processors, it
works just fine on non-vt boxes here.

But again, you have Xen booted, and a running Dom0, so Xen is doing
what it's supposed to do... my money is on a bad install tree (which
is what that error you shared seems to point to) or trying to run a
full virt guest from one Xen box on a second Xen box that does not
support full virt.

Good Luck,
Jeff

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