Re: [Xen-users] XCP default partition layout?

[John Morris <john@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Alexandre,

> Personally, I would advice against it. XCP is a consistent, compact
> system, made to have a _very_ predictable behavior. If you start to mess
> with it beyond the expectation of the developers, you are risking to
> find all sort of dark places. In that case, you better go for
> Debian/CentOS/whatever, with regular Xen hypervisor and XenAPI.
I agree with you under normal circumstances.  Difference here is I 
expect to convert to CentOS with XCP RPMs whenever they become 
available, even if I end up writing them myself.  I'm not afraid of the 
source.  ;)
> In order to dedicate the HDD to the DomU's, consider installing the host
> system on a USB flash drive. Some server have a nice internal USB
> connector. In case of XCP, it will require some tricks to make it boot
> (re-build initrd), but it's less invasive than re-ordering partitions.
> You will need at least 16GB drive. It is also possibleto install it on a
> 4GB drive, that is slightly more invasive.
Great idea, that's what I decided to do.  My original attempt I alluded 
to where I tried to install the host OS onto a 'separate disk' was a 
similar idea that didn't work out.  The root fs was an 8GB CF card 
tested in all kinds of converters (SATA, USB, PCMCIA), but it refused to 
write faster than 1.8 MB/s (despite being 133x, theoretically ~19 MB/s). 
 The USB flash drive is also pretty slow, but not nearly as bad.
I wrote up a cookbook to automate the initrd rebuild with a post-install 
script for those using an XCP answer file.  It occurs to me that 
/etc/fstab should mount / with the noatime option, and (something a 
script can't know how to do) move the swapfile somewhere else.
http://www.zultron.com/2012/08/xcp-on-usb-automate-initrd-rebuild/

        John

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