[Xen-users] use existing lvm volume as root in hvm/pv guest

[Daniël Boone <boone.daniel@xxxxxxxxx>]

I want to accomplish the following:

I want to have a xen guest that I can also boot physically.
Some indepth explanation:

I want to virtualise my mediacenter with pci passthrough of my 2 dvb-s 
cards.
In case of problems with my motherboard I want to boot the guest 
physically on other hardware without xen.
Current hardware:
Asrock Z77 pro 4
intel core i7 3370
1x 2,5" sata xen disk on as media controller
4x 2 TB WD disks in lvm  raid10  on intel sata controller.


I have tried the following scenario's without success.

Experiment 1
Ubuntu 13.04 with xen 4.2.2
create hvm guest with passthrough of intel sata controller: can see the 
disks, but cannot boot from it.
I tried to complie xen myself but failed.
raid and lvm managed by guest

Experiment 2
Ubuntu 12.04 with xen 4.1.0
create hvm guest with passthrough of intel sata controller: can see the 
disks, but cannot boot from it.
raid and lvm  managed by guest

Experiment 3
Ubuntu 12.04 with compiled xen 4.2.2  and qemu-upstream and seabios 1.7.2
create hvm guest with passthrough of intel sata controller: can boot 
from the disks if  device_model_version = 'qemu-xen' and 
device_model_override = '/usr/lib/xen/bin/qemu-system-i386' is used in 
config. But raid is not stable.
raid managed by guest

Experiment 4

Ubuntu 12.04 with compiled xen 4.2.2  and qemu-upstream and seabios 1.7.2
create hvm guest with passthrough physical disks seperately : the raid 
is detected in dom0 so this also poses an issue. I tried booting 
raid=noautodetect as grub parameter  but without success, raid still starts.
raid and lvm managed by guest

Experiment 5:

This is where I'm lost
Ubuntu 12.04 with compiled xen 4.2.2 and no qemu-upstream as I cannot 
boot from cdrom with qemu-upstream
I was thinking of adding a small file based disk for /boot and grub and  
using the previously installed lvm volume as root.
When I boot the guest from a rescuecd no diskpartitions are detected 
which is logical as the lvm volume is used as a filesystem and not a raw 
lvm disk.
Is there a way to use the filebased lvm as root?
If I use a lvm volume as a raw disk, would it be possible to boot from 
it with grub without virtualisation.





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