Fedora xen - Jul 2008 - Testing LiveCD distros as guests?

People,

I want to test out a bunch of LiveCD distributions - is it possible to 
set these up as guests under Xen so I don''t have to shut down my main 
machine?

Thanks,

Phil.
-- 
Philip Rhoades

Pricom Pty Limited  (ACN 003 252 275  ABN 91 003 252 275)
GPO Box 3411
Sydney NSW	2001
Australia
E-mail:  phil@pricom.com.au

On Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:50:14 +1000
Philip Rhoades <phil@pricom.com.au> wrote:
> I want to test out a bunch of LiveCD distributions - is it possible to 
> set these up as guests under Xen so I don''t have to shut down my
main
> machine?
If your hardware supports HVM installs, then just tell virt-manager
you are going to install a new HVM virtual machine and the install
media is the live cd image. With no HVM support, I don''t know - some
live CDs might run paravirt, but I have no specific knowledge
of such a beast.

Philip Rhoades wrote:
> People,
> 
> I want to test out a bunch of LiveCD distributions - is it possible to 
> set these up as guests under Xen so I don''t have to shut down my
main
> machine?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Phil.
You should be able to launch it via virsh or virt-manager with no issues.

-- bk

On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 03:50:14AM +1000, Philip Rhoades
wrote:
> I want to test out a bunch of LiveCD distributions - is it possible to 
> set these up as guests under Xen so I don''t have to shut down my
main
> machine?
Look at the man page for ''virt-install''  - in the
''Examples'' section
it shows how to run a LiveCD.

Regards,
Daniel
-- 
|: Red Hat, Engineering, London   -o-   http://people.redhat.com/berrange/ :|
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Philip Rhoades wrote:
> People,
> 
> I want to test out a bunch of LiveCD distributions - is it possible to 
> set these up as guests under Xen so I don''t have to shut down my
main
> machine?
> 
If you have HVM, probably yes (although you might have better luck with 
kvm), otherwise it requires paravirt support in the Live-CD, which moves 
it to the "it depends" column.

I have done all my testing using KVM, due to the dubious state of xen 
WRT FC{9,10}. And frankly I find it as easy to use unless I have a bunch 
of VMs on a single host.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot