The Perfect Xen Setup For Debian And Ubuntu - Page 2

Want to support HowtoForge? Become a subscriber!
 
Submitted by falko (Contact Author) (Forums) on Wed, 2005-11-09 12:43. ::

3.1 Installing The Binary Package

Run the following commands:

apt-get remove exim4 exim4-base lpr nfs-common portmap pidentd pcmcia-cs pppoe pppoeconf ppp pppconfig
apt-get install screen ssh debootstrap python python2.3-twisted iproute bridge-utils libcurl3-dev

<-- Yes
<-- Yes
<-- Yes

3.1.1 Install Xen

Next do this:

cd /usr/src/
wget http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/downloads/xen-2.0.7-install-x86_32.tgz

tar xvzf xen-2.0.7-install-x86_32.tgz
cd xen-2.0-install
./install.sh

mv /lib/tls /lib/tls.disabled

Now Xen is installed. In order to start the Xen services at boot time, do the following:

update-rc.d xend defaults 20 21
update-rc.d xendomains defaults 21 20

3.1.2 Configure The Bootloader And Reboot

Next we add the Xen kernel to Grub, our bootloader. Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst, and before the line ### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST add the following stanza:

title Xen 2.0 / XenLinux 2.6.11
kernel /xen.gz dom0_mem=64000
module /vmlinuz-2.6.11-xen0 root=/dev/hda6 ro console=tty0

Make sure that /dev/hda6 is your / partition. Keep in mind what I said about Grub and partitioning in chapter 1!

Now reboot the system:

shutdown -r now

At the boot prompt, Grub should now list Xen 2.0 / XenLinux 2.6.11 as the first kernel and boot it automatically. If your system comes up without problems, then everything is fine!

up

Copyright © 2005 Falko Timme
All Rights Reserved.
add comment | view as pdf view as pdf | print: this | all page(s)
Please do not use the comment function to ask for help! If you need help, please use our forum.
Comments will be published after administrator approval.
having more than four virtual machines
Submitted by Anonymous (not registered) on Thu, 2006-03-16 16:15.

This is a great how-to and I only have a small addition:

If you want to run more than 4 virtual machines, you need to add a boot option for the dom0 kernel in order to permit enough file-backed virtual block devices. In the example above, the line 

module /vmlinuz-2.6.11-xen0 root=/dev/hda6 ro console=tty0

in section 3.1.2 has to be modified to

module /vmlinuz-2.6.11-xen0 root=/dev/hda6 ro console=tty0 max_loop=X

where the X needs to be replaced by 2 times the number of virtual machines.

Of course, as the Xen manual points out, if you have heavy I/O taking places in your virtual machines, you may experience performace losses if you increase X much beyond the default value of 8.


Dirk Petry

reply | view as pdf view as pdf
More than 4 VMs?
Submitted by Anonymous (not registered) on Sat, 2006-05-06 22:21.

as well as the max_loop=16 (or 2 x however many VMs you want)

you might need to make the loop devices eg /dev/loop8 /dev/loop9 etc

This helped me:

for i in $(seq 8 63) ; do mknod /dev/loop$i b 7 $i ; done

chmod 660 /dev/loop* ; chown 0.disk /dev/loop*

HTH Simon Faulkner

reply | view as pdf view as pdf
./install.sh
Submitted by Anonymous (not registered) on Sat, 2006-03-11 16:56.

In Ubuntu my ./install.sh failed due to i missing the twisted framework.

The error was;

Installing Xen from './install' to '/'...
All done.
Checking to see whether prerequisite tools are installed...
FAILED check_twisted
Checks failed. See /usr/src/xen-2.0-install/check/.chkinstall for details.
All done.

I fixed this by 'apt-get install python-twisted'

k31th

reply | view as pdf view as pdf