Re: [Xen-users] Importing Windows XP installation

["Ray Barnes" <tical.net@xxxxxxxxx>]

If /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda4 are exactly the same size, surely the overhead of LVM makes the logical volume a little smaller than /dev/sda1.  Can you remake /dev/sda4 as something slightly bigger than /dev/sda1 and retry the whole operation?  Without knowing any more than I do about the underlying tech used to boot HVM, I'm imagining that something (windows bootloader, qemu?) thinks your partition is invalid because it can't see the end of it (because the partition is truncated).

 

-Ray

 

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 3:08 AM, flinco@xxxxxxxxx <flinco@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi,

I'm using a little workstation with the following configuration:
- CPU Intel Q6600
- 2 GB DDR3 SDRAM
- 250GB SATA2 HD

- Win XP SP3 32bit on /dev/sda1 (NTFS)
- Fedora 8 32bit on /dev/sda2 (ETX3)
- Extended /dev/sda3 with:
 + a shared /dev/sda5 (NTFS)
 + 2 GB linux swap /dev/sda6

I would like to know if it is possible to take the pre-installed WinXP installation (sda1) and to run "as it is" on a xen paravirtual domain. I would like to do this way because I cannot make a new installation of Windows (I'm doing this on my office machine that runs a XP downgraded from Vista, and there's no XP recover/install CD).

It's my first time with xen and (para)virtualization.
I followed Xen User Manual and "How to Install Windows on Xen 3.0".
To be able to experiment without damaging the original XP installation I made a primary unformatted /dev/sda4 (same size of sda1) where I created a Volume Group called VG_Guests. Then I filled VG_Guests with a Logical Volume I called win_xp_sp3.
I tried to copy the physical partition sda1 into the logical volume win_xp_sp3 (dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/VG_Guests/win_xp_sp3).

I use the following win_xp_sp3.hvm:

#====================================================
import os, re
arch = os.uname()[4]
if re.search('64', arch):
   arch_libdir = 'lib64'
else:
   arch_libdir = 'lib'

kernel = "/usr/lib/xen/boot/hvmloader"
builder='hvm'
memory = 768
name = "win_xp_sp3"
#vcpus=1
#acpi=1
#apic=1
pae=1
cpus = "2,3"
vif = [ 'type=ioemu, mac=00:1A:4D:5C:69:7B, bridge=xenbr0' ]
disk = [ 'phy:/dev/VG_Guests/win_xp_sp3,ioemu:hda,w','phy:/dev/sr0,ioemu:hdc:cdrom,r' ]
device_model = '/usr/' + arch_libdir + '/xen/bin/qemu-dm'
cdrom="/dev/sr0"
boot="dc"
#snapshot=1
#sdl=1
vnc=1
vncviewer=1
#vncviewer=0
#nographic=0
#serial='pty'
ne2000=0
#usb=1
#usbdevice='tablet'
audio=1
#localtime=1
#full-screen=1
#stdvga=0

I can boot from cdrom, but I cannot boot the copied XP, because paravirtual system hangs after showing "Booting From Hard Disk".
Then I tried booting a "non genuine" XP CD to access the Recovery Console; i run FIXBOOT C: but the system still doesn't boot.

There's something else I can try?

Thanks

L.B.



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