Re: [Xen-users] New to xen

["Fajar A. Nugraha" <fajar@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 2:14 PM, Douglas Garstang
<doug.garstang@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I started experimenting with xen this evening, and I'm rather
> frustrated already.
>
> None of the documentation seems to correlate or match up with any
> other documentation.

It does, doesn't it? We could really use volunteers who's willing to
manage documentation properly. xen wiki is a good start, but it's not
complete. yet.

> We are currently PXE booting and kickstarting
> bare metal systems, and that is working fine. In order to maintain the
> same deployment procedure to bare metal and virtual machines I would
> like to do the same with xen guests. However, it seems like pvm guests
> don't support network booting

It does. Sort of. See http://www.grid.ie/pypxeboot/ and
http://zhigang.org/files/docbook/xen-pxeboot.html

> and hvm guests don't support the virtual
> console.

If you mean the console you connect to using "xm console", hvm console
can support it just fine. It's treated as a serial port if you have
this entry on domU config file :

serial='pty'

> I've seen documentation that says you have to add console
> output to your kernel boot arguments... but what sort of serial
> console is that? Is it a real serial console or a virtualised one???

I assume you're talking about HVM domUs? The setup process on domU
side is similar as setting up real machines to use serial port as
output. This is what I used on HVM opensuse domU's grub.conf:

#================================================
serial --unit=0 --speed=9600
terminal --timeout=5 serial console

title openSUSE 11.1 - 2.6.27.29-0.1
    root (hd0,1)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.29-0.1-default root=LABEL=ROOT
resume=LABEL=SWAP splash=silent showopts console=tty1 console=ttyS0
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.29-0.1-default
#================================================

I'm not sure whether the "console=tty1" part is correct, but at least
the serial console works fine, and I can access it from dom0 using "xm
console". And don't forget to edit /etc/inittab (or equivalent) to
spawn login screen on ttyS0 or console.

>
> The Xen FAQ (http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenFaq) says that you
> an add console access by adding a new entry to xinetd... didn't seem
> to work though. Am I even looking the right thing here?

sort of.

> Is this
> talking about the virtual console that connects me to a guest, or
> something else?

That part is talking about how you can connect to a tcp port on dom0
and have dom0 run "xm console", sending its output via network.

I assume that's not what you want though, and that you only want "xm
console" to work for HVM domU. In this case you need to setup the OS
inside domU to use first serial port as its console.

>
> A lot of people seem to be using vnc to connect to their guests
> (again, because hvm guests don't support the serial console). Why?

... because some people are stuck with Windows domUs.

> I
> mean, if your going to go use a graphic UI to manage the guests, you
> might as well just go use vmware.

IMHO it's mostly a matter of choice. I dumped vmware server several
years ago as it's I/O performance sucks. It might perform better now,
plus ESXi is available for free, but I'm much more comfortable with
Xen on servers nowadays, and virtualbox on desktop.

> Hell will freeze over before I use a
> graphic UI to manage by servers, bare metal or virtual. Heck, OpenVZ
> is completely command line driven and it's 'console' command works
> just fine.

Use whatever fits your need best.
Xen PV guest should be somewhat similar (in console behavior) to OpenVZ.

-- 
Fajar

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