Xen and Fedora 7

I've had problems virtualizing Fedora 7 under F7. Seems strange, nothing should be easier. Here's an example:

[root@adama ~]# virt-install -n apollo02
  -f /dev/vg0/xen-apollo01 --nographics -p
  -l ftp://192.168.69.13/f7-64 -r 520
  -x "ks=ftp://192.168.69.13/ks/apollo.ks"
Starting install...
  ... output truncated ...
Write protecting the kernel read-only data: 938k

And the guest locks. Or does it? In reality, the guest is running the kickstart install but the console can not connect. If we try xm console X, we get nothing. If we try to connect through virt-manager, we get nothing. But, as long as the kickstart is fully automated, the install will work.

Let's try this:

[root@adama ~]# virt-install -n fc6vm
  -f /dev/vg0/xen-apollo01 --nographics -p
  -l ftp://192.168.69.13/fc6-64 -r 520
  -x "ks=ftp://192.168.69.13/ks/fc6vm.ks"
Starting install...
  ... output truncated ..
Welcome to Fedora Core

The console launches, and everything works as expected.

Interesting. So... Whats different between the was F7 boots and FC-6? One thing I had noticed was that F-7 boots in the XGA mode (43x80 vs 25x80). I try adding text to the -x option, without luck. Then I tried this:

[root@adama ~]# virt-install -n apollo02
  -f /dev/vg0/xen-apollo01 --nographics -p
  -l ftp://192.168.69.13/f7-64 -r 520
  -x "ks=ftp://192.168.69.13/ks/apollo.ks console=vga"
Starting install...
  ... output truncated ..
Welcome to Fedora

Much to my elation, it worked. One more thing to check, however.
Stay tuned.

Casarsa Chardonnay

Smooth as can be. This Italian chardonnay is value prices, packed in 1.5 liter bottles and oh so sippable. 7 of 10

Fedora 7 Services

I've always thought Red hat enabled too many services by default. Mauriat Miranda's site has a page that documents many of the default services for Fedora 7 and explains which onces can safely be disabled. This saved several minutes in constructing a kickstart file directive that disables un-needed services.

services disable anacron atd avahi-daemon bluetooth cpuspeed dhcdbd firstboot hidd hplip iptables ip6tables nfslock pcscd rpcbind rpcgssd rpcidmapd

Wow! That's allot of bloat.

Xen: Fedora 7

Today must be my lucky day. Seeing as I am incredibly sick, that seems unlikely, but I have managed to get Fedora 7 to install as a para-virt guest on Fedora 7. That may not seem like a big deal, but it is the first time it has worked.

I did two things different:
1. Allocated 520M of memory for the install. Fedora Core 6 would install with 256M, but 7 would fail.
2. I selected the default partitioning scheme. Unfortunately, the default scheme was thought up by a brain dead engineer. My evidence is that they set aside all disk space for LVM and allocate it all to root. Turns out, root is the only file system you can not reduce. Thus, no way to reorder the partitioning.

I think it was number 2 that made the difference, as Disk Druid would run, ask to activate swap, than freeze regardless of whether I picked Yes or No. Should be easy enough to prove, but that will have to wait for tomorrow.

Xen: Full Virt Solaris 10, Pt 6 (Final!)

Yes, it works. Finally. To paraphrase Calvin Coolidge, it's persistence that triumphs in the end. So, at this point, I have Solaris 10 running as a fully virtualized guest under Fedora 7.

Lessons Learned:
1. Do not use the CD images, use the DVD images. There are several known issues with the CD's.
2. Do not install from physical media. Place the ISO on Dom0's hard drive and install from the ISO. (This also solves the problem of not having a DVD drive.)
3. Set the memory for install at 520M. The Solaris installer needs more than 512M to run properly. (The memory footprint can be lowered post install.)
4. For networking, select "Shared physical device". Otherwise you end up behind a virtual bridge and you have to NAT your traffic.
5. Have a "Solaris recognized" video board installed in the machine. Oddly, you don't have to use the video board, it just has to be there for hardware recognition. (Is the term "Solaris recognized" a real term? No. How do we know if the board is Solaris recognized? Attempt an install or a real Solaris instance.)

What an exercise in aggravation. At least that's out of the way.

Xen: Full Virt Solaris 10, Pt 5

My praises of Fedora 7 seem much too premature. I seems the Xen technology in this release is highly transitional. After nearly a month of working on this, I have found managed to get Solaris 10 installed, but there was a catch.

On a Xen system, Dom0 owns the hardware and controls access to the guests. Unfortunately, Dom0 will not give Solaris 10 access to any hardware except the video and the keyboard. Since I had multi-ISO install media, I could not complete an install. The problem was the fact the after the first CD, the guest was never allowed access to the media again.

The solution came from Per Hjartoy, who has observed the behavior for Windows guests. (see his efforts: install trouble with CD-RW, win2k3 server hangs) He recommended using the DVD ISO as the install media rather than a real CD. Thus, no swapping of disks.

Thank you. It worked, as I now have an accessible Solaris 10 environment... As long as I use the console! You see, the network card is hardware, and the Hypervisor won't let Solaris access the network. Thus, I have a working guest, but no way to access it.

Very frustrating.

Xen Console

Command to connect to a Xen console from a shell prompt:

# xm console guestname

This is similar to telnet'ing into a serially connected terminal server. The bad news is that the exit command drops you to the guest's login prompt, not Dom0's shell prompt. Solution:

apollo.terran.lan:   Ctrl+]   [root@adama xen]#

That character sequence is press and hold the control key, and tap the close bracket key. (Yes, it does it up displaying as a single line in the terminal window.)

L2S: Hardware Analysis

On linux, a few minutes in the /proc can provide a huge amount of information about the physical construction of a system. On Solaris, /proc is exclusively process information. Here are a the two most basic hardware interrogation solutions:

# prtconf | grep Mem
Memory size: 512 Megabytes
# iostat –En | egrep -v "Not|Req" | sed "s/[A-Z]/ &/"
c0t0d0     Soft Errors: 0 Hard Errors: 0 Transport Errors: 0
 Model: ST38420A   Rev: 3.05 Serial No: 7AZ0V59C
 Size: 8.62GB <8622415872 bytes>
c0t2d0     Soft Errors: 0 Hard Errors: 1 Transport Errors: 0
 Vendor: LG   Product: CD-ROM CRD-8322B Rev: 1.05 Serial No:
 Size: 0.00GB <0 bytes>

Given that ifconfig -a will give us a good look at the network cards, we can now get a fair look at our hardware.

Xen: Deleting Guests

I still can not get a Xen guest to see the CD-RW, which has been quite a hassle. In my repeated attempts, I've ended up with a bunch of tangling participles, which is to say I have several bogus configurations in the database. I finally found a way to purge an unwanted configuration.

[root@adama ~]# xm list
Name
Domain-0 ...
apollo01 ...
starbuck01 ...
starbuck02 ...
[root@adama ~]# virsh undefine starbuck02
Domain starbuck02 has been undefined

[root@adama ~]# xm list
Name
Domain-0 ...
apollo01 ...
starbuck01 ...
[root@adama ~]#

Now I can reuse the same name.

ASCII Art

While I should have been trying to solve this whole Xen/Solaris mess, I wasted time looking at Chris Johnson's ASCII Art Gallery. Cool stuff. And did you notice his domain name... chris.com