Re: [Xen-users] New to xen

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

cc-ing the list as well

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 11:35 PM, Douglas Garstang
<doug.garstang@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 2:05 AM, Fajar A. Nugraha <fajar@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>> 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 :
>
> Yes, but that's not really good enough for a PXE boot and kickstart
> install. I can pass the extra console parameters to the kernel on boot
> to send output to the serial port (and back into xm console), but what
> about before that? How do I see what the PXE boot process is doing?
> There's a lot of stuff that goes on before the kernel starts up.

So from this point we're being specific about HVM domUs, right?
Xen HVM domUs uses lots of Qemu components. Redirecting all "vga"
output to serial port requires BIOS support. Something like
http://code.google.com/p/sgabios/ would be needed, though I'm not
aware of any ready-to-use implementation for Xen yet.

>
> Also, in a kickstart install that goes to a VGA console, you have your
> multiple virtual consoles (ie pressing alt-f1, alt-f2 etc). A lot of
> extra debug goes to these screens so that if something fails during
> the process, you have an idea of what went wrong. If the install is
> done via a serial port, you have none of these. Even vmware lets the
> Linux VM have it's normal virtual consoles. Why can't xen have that?
> This seems like a major draw back to me.

are you referring to accessing vmware guests via VMware Virtual
Machine Console? That's pretty much what Xen does already using
vnc/SDL GUI. If you want Vmware-like functionality where you can see
guests's VGA output immediately when a guest starts, you might want to
try using virt-manager.

-- 
Fajar

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