CentOS virt - Mar 2015 - CentOS 6 VM image for paravirtualizaton on CentOS Xen server

On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 8:26 PM, Sarah Newman <srn at prgmr.com>
wrote:
> On 03/15/2015 03:25 PM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
>> So I'm right back to my effectively unanswered original questions.
So
>> please: I asked a very specific pair of questions, and they remain
>> unanswered. CentOS 5 Xen server (hypervisor, or Dom0, whatever we want
>> to call it this week): Does CentOS 6 work, paravirtualized, on such a
>> server? And given my deployment issues, does anyone have a base OS
>> image I can get a copy of?
>
> I'm not sure why you need tftp to do a net install assuming you control
the guest configuration.
>
> How about
>
> kernel = file from
https://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/6/os/i386/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
> ramdisk = file from
https://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/6/os/i386/images/pxeboot/initrd.img
> extra = "console=hvc0"
> memory = 512 or larger
>
> --Sarah
I'll be happy to try this. Thank you for the pointer. Are you
confident that 'console=hvc0' is the right installation time message
for this? And will I be able to access a CD or DVD image for actual OS
installation with these options?

I'd really prefer to work from 'virsh' than from hand-writing xl
configuration files.When I last did this sort of thing, I worked from
a PXE environment that I controlled and could reserve DHCP settings
based on MAC addresses, and tune PXE to boot from disk by default but
allow users to select a clean re-install of the operating system they
wanted.

On 03/15/2015 07:39 PM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 8:26 PM, Sarah Newman <srn at prgmr.com>
wrote:
>> On 03/15/2015 03:25 PM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
>>> So I'm right back to my effectively unanswered original
questions. So
>>> please: I asked a very specific pair of questions, and they remain
>>> unanswered. CentOS 5 Xen server (hypervisor, or Dom0, whatever we
want
>>> to call it this week): Does CentOS 6 work, paravirtualized, on such
a
>>> server? And given my deployment issues, does anyone have a base OS
>>> image I can get a copy of?
>>
>> I'm not sure why you need tftp to do a net install assuming you
control the guest configuration.
>>
>> How about
>>
>> kernel = file from
https://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/6/os/i386/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
>> ramdisk = file from
https://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/6/os/i386/images/pxeboot/initrd.img
>> extra = "console=hvc0"
>> memory = 512 or larger
>>
>> --Sarah
> 
> I'll be happy to try this. Thank you for the pointer. Are you
> confident that 'console=hvc0' is the right installation time
message
> for this? And will I be able to access a CD or DVD image for actual OS
> installation with these options?
It is net install IE you download packages over the network. No CD/DVD.

console=hvc0 is the xen part, otherwise look at the standard installation
instructions for centos 6.
> 
> I'd really prefer to work from 'virsh' than from hand-writing
xl
> configuration files.When I last did this sort of thing, I worked from
> a PXE environment that I controlled and could reserve DHCP settings
> based on MAC addresses, and tune PXE to boot from disk by default but
> allow users to select a clean re-install of the operating system they
> wanted.
virt-install with --location maybe? Never tried it but it looks like what you
want.

http://linux.die.net/man/1/virt-install

On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 07:52:42PM -0700, Sarah Newman
wrote:
> > 
> > I'd really prefer to work from 'virsh' than from
hand-writing xl
> > configuration files.When I last did this sort of thing, I worked from
> > a PXE environment that I controlled and could reserve DHCP settings
> > based on MAC addresses, and tune PXE to boot from disk by default but
> > allow users to select a clean re-install of the operating system they
> > wanted.
> 
> virt-install with --location maybe? Never tried it but it looks like what
you want.
> 
> http://linux.die.net/man/1/virt-install
> 
Yeah you can use virt-install on CentOS 5 Xen host to install CentOS 6 PV domUs,
I do that often, an example for GUI installation:

virt-install -d -n vmname -r 1024 --vcpus=2 -f /dev/vg01/vmname_disk0 -b virbr0
--vnc -p -l "http://ftp.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/centos.org/6.5/os/x86_64"

(you need to have virt-viewer installed, that'll be used to display the VNC
GUI console).

-- Pasi