Comments on How To Run Fully-Virtualized Guests (HVM) With Xen 3.2 On Debian Lenny (x86_64)

How To Run Fully-Virtualized Guests (HVM) With Xen 3.2 On Debian Lenny (x86_64) This guide explains how you can set up fully-virtualized guests (HVM) with Xen 3.2 on a Debian Lenny x86_64 host system. HVM stands for HardwareVirtualMachine; to set up such guests, you need a CPU that supports hardware virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-V). Hardware virtualization allows you to install unmodified guest systems (in contrast to paravirtualization where the guest kernel needs to be modified); that way you cannot only virtualize OpenSource operating systems like Linux and BSD, but also closed-source operating systems like Windows where you cannot modify the kernel.

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By: admin

The egrep command doesn't show the correct details anymore once Xen is installed. That's why you must use

xm dmesg | grep -i hvm

By: Flip

If I run:

xm dmesg | grep -i hvm
(XEN) HVM: VMX enabled

It tells me I have the support but:

 egrep '(vmx|svm)' --color=always /proc/cpuinfo

Return nothing so I don't know if I have the possibility or not? Is it correct that I get so different results? It's an older Quadcore 6600 with ,if I keep correct in my mind, just 4MB L1 Cache not with 8MB.

By: Frenchy

Great ! This is the first tutorial about Windows over Xen i've found which is working !

Thanks a lot !

By: Marius Ionel

HVM works with LVM too.

Instead of 

disk = [ 'file:/home/xen1.example.com.img,xvda,w', 'file:/home/ubuntu8_10_server_amd64.iso,xvdc:cdrom,r' ]

 use

disk = [ ''phy:/dev/vps/ubuntu-test,xvda,w'', 'file:/home/ubuntu8_10_server_amd64.iso,xvdc:cdrom,r' ]

where ubuntu-test is your logical volume. This must be created first. Maybe it works without created first, but I have'n tryed. yet.

By: Lance Leger

Like the author, I couldn't get HVM with LVM to work. I could get my HVM to boot via an ISO, recognize my logical volume, and even partition/install to the logical volume. Upon reboot, the server failed to recogize the hard drive. Suggestions?

By:

I found a way to make it work for me:

 In the  /etc/xen/xen1.example.com.cfg file use a different disk line.
change:

disk = [ 'file:/home/xen1.example.com.img,xvda,w', 'file:/home/ubuntu8_10_server_amd64.iso,xvdc:cdrom,r' ]

to:

disk = [ 
'phy:/dev/virtual/xen2.example.com-disk,ioemu:hda,w',
'file:/root/windows.iso,ioemu:hdb:cdrom,r' ]

And you can see your LVM in the installer and you can boot the newly installed machine!

By: LightVision

Hi,

 The line above should work.

 If you are trying to to setup windows that depends of windows version, I think.

Anyway, for the XP you should use hda instead of xvda

 Good Luck.

Unfortunately,  there is any chance, until now, to setup a HVM with routed scripts in Dom0.

By: clumsy888

Thanks - it has helped a lot!! It took a while but now :-) a WinXP is running as Guest in Debian Lenny. When starting the Guest with "xm create /etc/xen/xen1.example.com.cfg" command. I got an error, something like: Device 0 (vif) could not be connected. Hotplug skripts not working. solved by commending the vif line in the xen1.example.com.cfg file. (and i changed the /etc/xen/xend-config.sxg file of course).

By: Anonymous

Very good tutorial, I used it for Debian Squeeze.

Just 2 points worth mentioning in my opinion :

1)  starting from an ordinary Debian Xen configuration (just intended to use for ParaVirtualisation), you must add :

apt-get install xen-qemu-dm-4.0

or whatever version according to your Debian version.

2) Very important for me (I had to search a while to correct that silly bug). My screen is on Windows (apologizes...) and I used tight VNC. Be careful that by default, tight VNC uses "Tight" encoding and that was apparently causing many hangs of the HVM for me. Switch to "Raw" encoding and everything is fine !

 

By: pian

i had started an os guest debian squeeze but the network was failed to start.

 

Can anyone help us to solve this problem ?Btw for the host i was running debian 7, and xen-4.1.

Thanks