Comments on The Perfect Xen 3.0.1 Setup For Debian

The Perfect Xen 3.0.1 Setup For Debian This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Xen (version 3.0.1) on a Debian Sarge (3.1) system. Xen lets you create guest operating systems (*nix operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD), so called "virtual machines" or domUs, under a host operating system (dom0). Using Xen you can separate your applications into different virtual machines that are totally independent from each other (e.g. a virtual machine for a mail server, a virtual machine for a high-traffic web site, another virtual machine that serves your customers' web sites, a virtual machine for DNS, etc.), but still use the same hardware. This saves money, and what is even more important, it's more secure. If the virtual machine of your DNS server gets hacked, it has no effect on your other virtual machines. Plus, you can move virtual machines from one Xen server to the next one.

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By: Anonymous

Good tutorial - like most here; thanks.

But a few questions remain open, like

1. Partitioning

For a shared production host, do you really think that one /vserver Partition is enough? And only *one* (well two, counting the swap) file per virtual machine? How about logfiles, fragmentation & all that stuff? I'd rather have a setup with separate *real* /usr, /var, /home etc. partitions for each virtual machine; not only performance-wise.

2. Memory

Since Xen3.0, should you really define an absolute memory size per virtual machine? Wouldn't it be far better to let Xen decide about that and dynamically allocate memory, maybe with a max-mem parameter?

3. Installation

To make all this work with for instance shared hosting, where you usually rent a box which you will never see, you should maybe expand this Howto with a debootstrap variant (and the right fixed IP) right from the start - otherwise you won't be able to access that box anymore after the first reboot.

But, like I said in the beginning: a nice tutorial - thanks again!

cheers,

wjl

By: Anonymous

apt-get install python-dev

because xen does not compile without it

libsdl1.2-dev is also required for a graphical output of something but I cannot tell now about it (I should test)...

By: Anonymous

apt-get install libgpmg1-dev is required also, because qemu fails with the test for static SDL library.

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Maybe the title for this should be changed to be more specific.  Instead of "The Perfect Xen 3.0.1 Setup For Debian", how about "Install Xen from source on Debian Sarge".

In 2007 it's not normally necessary to download and compile Xen from source, although this might have been the way to go when this was written back in early 2006.