On Thu, May 05, 2011 at 04:53:22PM -0400, Martes G Wigglesworth wrote:
>
> On 05/05/2011 09:09 AM, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
> > It sounds like your hardware does not have HVM support,
> > which means you can only run PV VMs.
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> You are correct.
>
> I have two P4 32-bit machines that I just picked up and wanted to use
> them for testing until I can afford to upgrade to the 12-core
> MB/Processors that I bought these 2u chassis into which I plan to install.
>
> I have never used xen, and it just seems kind of odd that you cannot
> simply install from the hard drive, like on virtualbox. Anyhow, I could
> only figure that was the outlying factor.
>
> I could not locate that aspect of the virt-manager docs, so I will check
> again.
>
Not being able to install from ISO image as PV VM is a virt-manager limitation.
(and partly centos/rhel distro limitation).
> Anyhow, now I am fighting with SL-Linux's installation media for i386,
> having the ability to be seen, and booted, but inside their own boot
> menue, it forces you to re-verify that you have install media. (Even
> though it is running from the media in the first place. Then Xen
> magically can't see the iso that SL linux is running from.)
>
> Are there any good (I guess dated, now that everything is mulit-core)
> docs on how to work with paravirtualization, since I have to deal with
> this weird "network" install setup? It seems that I can put in the
> explicit path to the local-disk-installed ISO image, but the second it
> boots, nothing can be found, and it asks me to put in a url, etc...
>
RHEL/CentOS docs have examples...
http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Virtualization/index.html
cmdline virt-install example to install PV RHEL5/CentOS5:
http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Virtualization/chap-Virtualization-Guest_operating_system_installation_procedures.html#sect-Virtualization-Installing_Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux_5_as_a_para_virtualized_guest
Fedora can be installed as Xen PV VM in the same way..
just give fedora mirror URL instead of RHEL/CentOS mirror URL.
>
> I know this sounds incoherent, but I am burnt out from exams.
> > Installation for PV (paravirtualized) VMs is only supported
> > by using netinstall in virt-manager.
> >
> > HVM (fully virtualized) VMs can be installed from ISO image.
> Thanks for the input, and would appreciate any further direction on
> reading further on "real-world" installs, not the docs where they assume
> you have a quad 12-core processor super server so "everything thing just
> works in virtualmode... ) I guess this is more for virt-manager, but I
> think you will understand what I mean if you check the doc site for virt
> manager. They don't even mention that there is a limitation such as
> what you have described, except to say "there is a limitation."
>
> Sorry for the ramble. Need more RedBull, or maybe not so much???? Lol..
>
Hehe.
You can also use other tools than virt-manager/virt-install to install VMs.
- debootstrap to install Debian/Ubuntu VMs.
- thirdparty "xen-tools" to install Debian/Ubuntu VMs.
- febootstrap to install fedora.
- various chroot tricks to install rpm-based distros.
- Fedora native installer, by downloading the fedora installer pxeboot
kernel + initrd and booting them as xen pv domU.
- Debian/Ubuntu native installer, by downloading the debian 6.0 or ubuntu 10.04
installer netinstall kernel + initrd and booting them as xen pv domU.
See the end of the tutorial for an example how to install ubuntu manually using the distro installer:
http://wiki.xen.org/xenwiki/Fedora13Xen4Tutorial
-- Pasi
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