Comments on How To Set Up Xen 3.0 From Binaries In Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake)

Because the Ubuntu Kernel has EVMS patch in it, I got some errors with booting. I also couldn't mount my boot partition that was on a FLASH disk at /dev/hda1.

 After removing the EVMS package all problems where solved.

Joost 

I can't mount partitions on /dev/sdb when Xen is started.

[admin@server ~] mount /dev/sdb1 /backup1

mount: /dev/sdb1 already mounted or /backup1 busy 

When I reboot with the non Xen kernel everything is fine.

After googling around it seems that some lvm or dm issues may be the cause and that sounds like the EVMS issue you mention here.

How is EVMS disabled? 

all instructions worked well. now i started using xen. thanks a lot !
bvidinli (www.ehcp.net, easy hosting control panel..)

I wanted to try out Xen and followed these instructions to the letter. It all works perfectly. Thank you for putting together such a clean and clear guide. You have saved me days of work. If anyone else wants to try Xen - start here !

Your instructions (which worked for me - thanks) include a suggestion to change the permissions on /etc/sudoers, edit it and change the permissions back.  The 'right' way to edit the file is to issue this command:

visudo

If you want to use an editor other than 'vi' you can set the EDITOR environment variable to point to your favoured editor (presumably in .bashrc or similar).  Using visudo ensures that you cannot install a sudoers file which has errors in it. 

Hi !

IMHO using loopbacks for Xen is a very poor setup. LVM partitions backends are A LOT better (faster), and that's what we do at GPLHost.

Also, if you guys want to give it a try, we have added some xen functionnalities to our open source control panel. It's based on a python SOAP server that runs on the dom0, while a client in PHP (the control panel) connects to it to know the state of the VM, start, shutdown and destroy it. It also includes a network and CPU graphing tool.

Thomas (from GPLHost.com)

Never seen such a beautiful how-to. If we have included bootstrapping directly from ubuntu CD that would have been really great.

• I did not partition my hda1 but left it all under "/"
• I installed the xen kernel using you instructions (thank you istari * 2)
• Installed xen-tools and created the default location

 sudo apt-get install xen-tools
 sudo mkdir /home/xen
 sudo mkdir /home/xen/domains
 sudo chmod a+rw /home/xen
 sudo chmod a+rw /home/xen/domains
 sudo xen-create-images --kernel=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.16-xen --hostname=test
 sudo xm create test.cfg -c
 test login: admin1 # use YOUR sudo user
 Password: ****** 

 Oh yeah!

• The /home/xen/domains default is why I used a single partition.
•  xen's default is 2.2.12 - you MUST name the kernel
• no internet required - the image is created from the "host" system.
• I just did this  - all tailoring and testing has NOT been done
  

Excellent writeup! Worked like a charm! I used these instructions for Edgy.

 The only issue I ran into was when I was creating Dom1 as I received this error msg:

Error: Device 0 (vif) could not be reconnected. Hotplug scripts not working.

 I also found that /var/log/xen-hotplug.log had:

trap: 53: ERR: bad trap

The fix is to change the first line in all the scripts in /etc/xen/scripts from /bin/sh to /bin/bash and then I could successfully create multiple DomU's!!!! I found the fix in:

http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-xen-devel/2006-July/000569.html

Thanks to all!

 -bz 

Great Howto. Thanks for that.

I wanted to share that when I tried to install xen 3.0.4 I went into some problems.
There was already a known bug report on xen bugtracker.
Sorry that I don't have the link for you here, I forgot which error that I had and can't find the link now.

Just for those who want it smooth install xen 3.0.3.

    If you want to follow this howto to the letters, get Xen 3.0.2 even though this howto said Xen 3.0.1.

 I have tried both versions. 3.0.1 not only has slightly different version of Linux kernel, but it didn't work at all no matter how I tweaked it accordingly (to this howto and to the Ubuntu 100 hacks book). For one example, in the /lib/modules directory, it contains both a Xen0 and XenU directory. In later versions, this has simplified to just a Xen directory.