xen discuss - Jul 2009 - Both Xen and VirtualBox On the Same Physical Host?

Hi all,
        I have a Sun x2200 named Adra running OpenSolaris 2008.11 set up as a
Dom0 per Levon''s instructions on this site.  It hosts some production
services and has been running nice and stable for a number of months now (with
NetWare DomUs running GroupWise, believe it or not).  The machine is pretty
nicely speced out and there''s room for more virtualisation, so I was
thinking of trying out the demo VM image of Comms Suite 6u1; however, the image
is a VirtualBox image, not Xen.  Can I safely install VirtualBox 3.0 on Adra
alongside the Xen 3.1.4 and run both types of virtualisation, or will this sort
of mixing cause the machine to spontaneously combust and/or implode?

thx
jake
-- 
This message posted from opensolaris.org

Am 08.07.2009 21:01, schrieb Jacob Ritorto:
> Hi all,
>          I have a Sun x2200 named Adra running OpenSolaris 2008.11 set up
as a Dom0 per Levon''s instructions on this site.  It hosts some
production services and has been running nice and stable for a number of months
now (with NetWare DomUs running GroupWise, believe it or not).  The machine is
pretty nicely speced out and there''s room for more virtualisation, so I
was thinking of trying out the demo VM image of Comms Suite 6u1; however, the
image is a VirtualBox image, not Xen.  Can I safely install VirtualBox 3.0 on
Adra alongside the Xen 3.1.4 and run both types of virtualisation, or will this
sort of mixing cause the machine to spontaneously combust and/or implode?
>
> thx
> jake
Afaik, it won''t work. The HW Virtualisation-Support is Used by the 
hypervisor, so not available in Dom0 or a guest. The other way around it 
may work but no hvm support inside a vbox only paravirtual domains are 
possible.

Please correct me someone if I''m wrong.

Florian

Jacob Ritorto wrote:
> Hi all,
>         I have a Sun x2200 named Adra running OpenSolaris 2008.11 set 
 > up as a Dom0 per Levon''s instructions on this site.  It hosts
some
 > production services and has been running nice and stable for a number
 > of months now (with NetWare DomUs running GroupWise, believe it or
 > not).  The machine is pretty nicely speced out and there''s room
 > for more virtualisation, so I was thinking of trying out the demo VM
 > image of Comms Suite 6u1; however, the image is a VirtualBox image,
 > not Xen.  Can I safely install VirtualBox 3.0 on Adra alongside the
 > Xen 3.1.4 and run both types of virtualisation, or will this sort of
 > mixing cause the machine to spontaneously combust and/or implode?

No, you cannot mix them... vbox will only run on metal.

But you should be able to boot the vdi on a Solaris dom0.
(tap:vdisk:/path/to/disk.vdi)

also can vdiskadm import /path/to/disk.vdi /path/to/disk0
if you want disk snapshots, etc (vdiskadm help or man vdiskadm)

Where did you download Comms Suite 6u1 from? Depending on how
it was built, it might even be easy to convert to a PV guest..




MRJ

Oh, nice, thanks -- I had no idea this was possible.  So is it going to be hvm
or pv? I suppose I can vdiskadm this comms suite image to a zvol and point the
Xen config file to it just like I did for the NetWare stuff (I''m stuck
with using xm new and that ilk -- haven''t even tried virt-install et al
because NetWare requires a kernel parameter).

As to the whereabouts of the comms suite image, I actually just googled comms
suite and it found http://www.sun.com/software/communications_suite/get.jsp ,
which took me to the demo image download (unzip and concatenate to get your
vdi):

http://mediacast.sun.com/users/AnthonyWaldron/media/vbox_vm_part_1_of_5
http://mediacast.sun.com/users/AnthonyWaldron/media/vbox_vm_part_2_of_5
http://mediacast.sun.com/users/AnthonyWaldron/media/vbox_vm_part_3_of_5
http://mediacast.sun.com/users/AnthonyWaldron/media/vbox_vm_part_4_of_5
http://mediacast.sun.com/users/AnthonyWaldron/media/vbox_vm_part_5_of_5
-- 
This message posted from opensolaris.org

Jacob Ritorto wrote:
> Oh, nice, thanks -- I had no idea this was possible.  So is it going to be
hvm or
 > pv?

You would start off with hvm... If it uses a nevada kernel, it should be
possible to convert it to a PV guest. I need to do a quick writeup
on how you do that one of these days...

Once 3.3 is putback, you should be able to use a e1000 NIC on a
xen HVM guest too (although I''m not sure how much this has
been tested).


> I suppose I can vdiskadm this comms suite image to a zvol and point the
 > Xen config file to it just like I did for the NetWare stuff (I''m
stuck with
 > using xm new and that ilk -- haven''t even tried virt-install et
al because
 > NetWare requires a kernel parameter).

If you have xvm 3.3 or 3.4 development bits, yes, you can use
translate. Takes a while of course :-)

    vdiskadm translate -I disk.vdi -x raw -d /dev/zvol/dsk/pool1/t1

-bash-3.2# vdiskadm help translate

translate - translate virtual disk data to a different type

USAGE:
   vdiskadm translate [-i type[:opt]] -I input_file -x type[:opt] -d output_file

   TYPES AND OPTIONS SUPPORTED
     vmdk:sparse
     vmdk:fixed
     vdi:sparse
     vdi:fixed
     vhd:sparse
     vhd:fixed
     raw
EXAMPLE:
   vdiskadm translate -I app.vmdk -x raw -d /dev/zvol/dsk/pool1/t1

-bash-3.2#


> As to the whereabouts of the comms suite image, I actually just googled
comms suite and it found
http://www.sun.com/software/communications_suite/get.jsp , which took me to the
demo image download (unzip and concatenate to get your vdi):
> 
> http://mediacast.sun.com/users/AnthonyWaldron/media/vbox_vm_part_1_of_5
> http://mediacast.sun.com/users/AnthonyWaldron/media/vbox_vm_part_2_of_5
> http://mediacast.sun.com/users/AnthonyWaldron/media/vbox_vm_part_3_of_5
> http://mediacast.sun.com/users/AnthonyWaldron/media/vbox_vm_part_4_of_5
> http://mediacast.sun.com/users/AnthonyWaldron/media/vbox_vm_part_5_of_5
Thanks.


MRJ

Apparently Xen 3.1.4 dislikes this VirtualBox image for some reason.  Here's
my process and result:

1) I prepared the comms vdi according to the instructions at the download site. 
First few blocks look like this when viewed through less(1).

<<< Sun xVM VirtualBox Disk Image >>>
^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^?^Pھ^A^@^A^@<90>^A^@^@^A^@

2) for simplicity, I copied it to a local file called Hawkeye.vdi

3) I created a Xen config file and used xm new to pull it in (don't hate me
-- I had to do it this way to make NetWare work and I haven't learned how to
do the new stuff yet):
jack@Adra~[116]11:13>cat Hawkeye.xmconfig 
vcpus = 2
memory = "2048"
name = "Hawkeye"
vif = [ '' ]
vfb=[ "type=sdl" ]
disk = ['tap:vdisk:/jack/Hawkeye.vdi,xvdc,w']

4) ran xm start Hawkeye and watched it puke on the image:
jack@Adra~[111]11:05>pfexec xm start Hawkeye
Error: Boot loader didn't return any data!
Usage: xm start <DomainName>

Start a Xend managed domain
  -p, --paused                   Do not unpause domain after starting it    
  -c, --console_autoconnect      Connect to the console after the domain is
created


So..  Any insight?
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Jacob,

If you want to use the vdi image (as opposed to a zvol), you'll need
to 'vdiskadm import' it.  This will place the vdi into the format
that xvm understands (basically it creates a directory containing
the image and generates an xml file).

# vdiskadm help import

import - import a zvol, raw file, or virtual disk

USAGE:
  vdiskadm import [-fnpqm] [-x <type>] -d <file|zvol|dsk> [-t
<type[:opt]>] vdname

EXAMPLE:
   vdiskadm import -d /downloads/image.vmdk /export/new_guests/disk1


This example will copy the vdi file to the /export/new_guests/disk1 directory.
If you don't have room for a copy, you can use
'vdiskadm import -m -d /downloads/image.vdi /export/new_guests/disk1'
(where m == move).

You'd then specify:
disk = ['tap:vdisk:/export/new_guests/disk1,xvdc,w']

Susan




Jacob Ritorto wrote:
> Apparently Xen 3.1.4 dislikes this VirtualBox image for some reason. 
Here's my process and result:
> 
> 1) I prepared the comms vdi according to the instructions at the download
site.  First few blocks look like this when viewed through less(1).
> 
> <<< Sun xVM VirtualBox Disk Image >>>
>
^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^?^Pھ^A^@^A^@<90>^A^@^@^A^@
> 
> 2) for simplicity, I copied it to a local file called Hawkeye.vdi
> 
> 3) I created a Xen config file and used xm new to pull it in (don't
hate me -- I had to do it this way to make NetWare work and I haven't
learned how to do the new stuff yet):
> jack@Adra~[116]11:13>cat Hawkeye.xmconfig 
> vcpus = 2
> memory = "2048"
> name = "Hawkeye"
> vif = [ '' ]
> vfb=[ "type=sdl" ]
> disk = ['tap:vdisk:/jack/Hawkeye.vdi,xvdc,w']
> 
> 4) ran xm start Hawkeye and watched it puke on the image:
> jack@Adra~[111]11:05>pfexec xm start Hawkeye
> Error: Boot loader didn't return any data!
> Usage: xm start <DomainName>
> 
> Start a Xend managed domain
>   -p, --paused                   Do not unpause domain after starting it
>   -c, --console_autoconnect      Connect to the console after the domain is
created
> 
> 
> So..  Any insight?
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xen-discuss@opensolaris.org

That seemed to work and got it moving a bit more, thanks.  But now it''s
actually crashing:

jack@Adra~[133]12:21>pfexec xm start Hawkeye
Error: (2, ''Invalid kernel'', "elf_xen_note_check: ERROR:
Not a Xen-ELF image: No ELF notes or ''__xen_guest'' section
found.\n")
Usage: xm start <DomainName>

Start a Xend managed domain
  -p, --paused                   Do not unpause domain after starting it    
  -c, --console_autoconnect      Connect to the console after the domain is
created



Any more ideas?
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This message posted from opensolaris.org

OK, reply to self here =/

I''m kind of unique when it comes to Xen because I''ve only ever
used it to virtualise NetWare and this is my first attempt to do a unix VM. 
Weird, huh?  Anyway, I read the ~HowToSolarisXenHVM doc and found out that
I''m not supposed to do it that way (above) and that I should be using
''xm create'' with a mildly customized HVM config template.  So
I just did that instead of my previous stuff above.  It seemed great at first --
got a real grub screen via sdl and selected all three of the options to test. 
The kernel boots and starts enumerating devs but it''s unable to mount
its root filesystem and crashes and burns.  Is this because the virtual disk
isn''t getting mapped correctly or something?  Clues, please, if you got
em..  Sorry if these are too-noobish questions.  Has anyone else gotten Co
 mms suite to run like this?  As you may have guessed from my context, we really
really really need a new mail system here and this is my initial cursory attempt
to show off Comms a bit.

thx
jake
-- 
This message posted from opensolaris.org

Jacob Ritorto wrote:
> OK, reply to self here =/
> 
> I''m kind of unique when it comes to Xen because I''ve only
ever used it to virtualise NetWare and this is my first attempt to do a unix VM.
Weird, huh?  Anyway, I read the ~HowToSolarisXenHVM doc and found out that
I''m not supposed to do it that way (above) and that I should be using
''xm create'' with a mildly customized HVM config template.  So
I just did that instead of my previous stuff above.  It seemed great at first --
got a real grub screen via sdl and selected all three of the options to test. 
The kernel boots and starts enumerating devs but it''s unable to mount
its root filesystem and crashes and burns.  Is this because the virtual disk
isn''t getting mapped correctly or something?  Clues, please, if you got
em..  Sorry if these are too-noobish questions.  Has anyone else gotten
 Comms suite to run like this?  As you may have guessed from my context, we
really really really need a new mail system here and this is my initial cursory
attempt to show off Comms a bit.



I''m still downloading the iso :-)



MRJ

> thx
> jake