Saturday, January 10, 2009


Install Fedora 10 PV DomU at Xen 3.3.1 CentOS 5.2 Dom0 & Xen 3.3.0 Intrepid Server Dom0 (Novell's Xen-inified Kernel) via local Apache Mirror


My experience with F10 PV DomU installs via profiles,described in details at recent post Xen 3.3.1rc1-pre port to CentOS 5.2 via http://bits.xensource.com mercurial repos and managing PV DomUs in graphical mode (like)

name="F10PV"
memory=2048
disk = ['file:/etc/xen/isos/f10.iso,xvdc:cdrom,r','phy:/dev/sdb5,xvda,w' ]
vif = [ 'bridge=eth0' ]
vfb = [ 'type=vnc,vncunused=1']
bootloader = "/usr/bin/pygrub"
kernel = "/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz"
ramdisk = "/images/pxeboot/initrd.img"
vcpus=1
on_reboot = 'restart'
on_crash = 'restart'

was negative, in regards of not providing an option to utilize local HTTP Mirror (NFS Share).Installer above just activated Xen Ethernet Interface at DomU and with no prompts address to Fedora's Internet Repositories, what is actually, time consuming procedure, even at 100KB/sec (ADSL) connection.Schema bellow works also at Xen 3.3 Intrepid Server Dom0 with Novell's Xen-inified kernel, where profile mentioned above is useless due to some incompatibility between Ubuntu loop devices and F10 ISO structure.
Workaround for this issue follows bellow.
Setup httpd daemon running then loop mount F10 iso :-

# mount -o loop f10.iso /var/www/html/f10
# cd /etc/xen/vm
# wget http://192.168.1.33/f10/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
--15:44:39-- http://192.168.1.33/f10/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
Connecting to 192.168.1.33:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 2637056 (2.5M) [text/plain]
Saving to: `vmlinuz'

100%[==========================================================>] 2,637,056 --.-K/s in 0.02s

15:44:40 (109 MB/s) - `vmlinuz' saved [2637056/2637056]

# wget http://192.168.1.33/f10/images/pxeboot/initrd.img
--15:45:10-- http://192.168.1.33/f10/images/pxeboot/initrd.img
Connecting to 192.168.1.33:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 17759712 (17M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: `initrd.img'

100%[==========================================================>] 17,759,712 --.-K/s in 0.09s

15:45:10 (198 MB/s) - `initrd.img' saved [17759712/17759712]

Create installation profile:-

# cat f10.inst
name="F10PV"
memory=2048
disk = ['phy:/dev/sdb5,xvda,w' ]
vif = [ 'bridge=eth0' ]
vfb = [ 'type=vnc,vncunused=1']
kernel = "/etc/xen/vm/vmlinuz"
ramdisk = "/etc/xen/vm/initrd.img"
vcpus=1
on_reboot = 'restart'
on_crash = 'restart'
# xm create f10.inst
# vncviewer localhost:0












When done switch to runtime profile:-

name="F10PV"
memory=2048
disk = ['phy:/dev/sdb5,xvda,w' ]
vif = [ 'bridge=eth0' ]
vfb = [ 'type=vnc,vncunused=1']
bootloader = "/usr/bin/pygrub"
vcpus=1
on_reboot = 'restart'
on_crash = 'restart'

Setup user's account at DomU and temporary disable services iptables&ip6tables
to setup VNC at DomU. Then connect to graphical console to tune firewall
(user port 5901 & DNS) and activate iptables services again.
Reboot system. It's ready to go.








Snapshots for F10 PV DomU at Xen 3.3 Intrepid Server Dom0:-











References
1. Xen 3.3.1rc1-pre port to CentOS 5.2 via http://bits.xensource.com mercurial repos and managing PV DomUs in graphical mode