Fedora On Citrix XenServer 5

I've been having problems getting Fedora to run on Citrix XenServer 5.5.0 and have been disappointed with the resources available to complete the task. But, once again, persistence has rewarded us with victory. The problem is "an issue" with the paravirt console driver.

On the Citrix XenServer, the console is meant to redirect to /dev/xvc0 rather than tty0. With Red Hat (and Fedora's) implementation of xen, the paravirt driver intercepts tty0 and seamlessly handles the reroute. No so with Citrix, meaning we need to help the VM find the location of the console. Three changes to the VM are needed:

vi /boot/grub/grub.conf
add a kernel argument:
...xen ro console=xvc0 root=...

vi /etc/inittab
change the tty1 line:
.../sbin/mingetty xvc0

to allow root login at console:
echo xvc0 >> /etc/securetty

What might make this difficult is the fact that without these changes, you can't get to the console. Unfortunately, without the console, you can't make the changes.

The interesting thing is that you can boot to single user mode, and avoid the problem. To do this:
  1. Using XenCenter, right click the newly created VM and select Properties.
  2. Click Startup Options.
  3. For OS Boot Parameters add single.
  4. Click OK and reboot the VM.
  5. Make the changes listed above.
  6. Use the same steps to remove single from the boot params.
  7. Reboot.
This should allow you to modify the VMs configuration.