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

On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 4:02 AM, Manuel Wolfshant
<wolfy at nobugconsulting.ro> wrote:
> Quote from an actual installation:
>
> [root at xenh4 ~]# history| grep virt
> virt-install  -n dhcpdns -p -r 1024 --os-type=linux --vnc -f
> /var/lib/xen/images/dhcpdns -s 2 -l
> http://192.168.50.40/mrepo/centos6-i386/disc1 -x
> "ks=ftp://192.168.50.40/linux/ks-minimalC6-xen.cfg"
>
> [root at xenh4 ~]# uname -a
> Linux xenh4 2.6.18-400.1.1.el5xen #1 SMP Thu Dec 18 02:18:37 EST 2014 i686
> i686 i386 GNU/Linux
>
> https://github.com/CentOS/Community-Kickstarts/blob/master/ks-minimalC6.cfg
> is quite close to the above mentioned ks-minimalC6-xen.cfg ( actually both
> are descendants of the same template of mine )
Thanks!!!! The key, hinted at by various notes in this thread, was the
use of the "--location" to point to a network accessibleinstallation
repository. I'm afraid that the Xen wiki directions about
"--location"
are a bit unclear about the need for this to be the base of a
deployment directory, one that *must* have a working subdirectory
called 'imagex/xen' with the relevant files in it. I admint, I have to
just love hardcoded, hidden requirements!!!

I'll point out for others who may need to image systems quickly that
it's often more effective, especially in terms of speed and external
bandwidth, to use an internal mirror as you did. I'll also point out
that it can be awfully handy to keep such a mirror up-to-date and use
it your local configurations. I publish such scripts at
https://github.com/nkadel/nkadel-rsync-scripts, in case anyone else
wants them.

I'll also mention my old habit in ks.cfg files of doing this, to hang
onto the actual ks.cfg instead of the confused and '%pre' and
'%post'
stripped, anaconda reverse engineered oddness in
/root/anaconda-ks.cfg.

    %pre
     cp -f /tmp/ks.cfg /mnt/sysimage/root/ks.cfg
    %end

On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 10:32 PM, Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel at gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 4:02 AM, Manuel Wolfshant
> <wolfy at nobugconsulting.ro> wrote:
>
> > Quote from an actual installation:
> >
> > [root at xenh4 ~]# history| grep virt
> > virt-install  -n dhcpdns -p -r 1024 --os-type=linux --vnc -f
> > /var/lib/xen/images/dhcpdns -s 2 -l
> > http://192.168.50.40/mrepo/centos6-i386/disc1 -x
> > "ks=ftp://192.168.50.40/linux/ks-minimalC6-xen.cfg"
> >
> > [root at xenh4 ~]# uname -a
> > Linux xenh4 2.6.18-400.1.1.el5xen #1 SMP Thu Dec 18 02:18:37 EST 2014
> i686
> > i686 i386 GNU/Linux
> >
> >
> https://github.com/CentOS/Community-Kickstarts/blob/master/ks-minimalC6.cfg
> > is quite close to the above mentioned ks-minimalC6-xen.cfg ( actually
> both
> > are descendants of the same template of mine )
>
> Thanks!!!! The key, hinted at by various notes in this thread, was the
> use of the "--location" to point to a network
accessibleinstallation
> repository. I'm afraid that the Xen wiki directions about
"--location"
> are a bit unclear about the need for this to be the base of a
> deployment directory, one that *must* have a working subdirectory
> called 'imagex/xen' with the relevant files in it. I admint, I have
to
> just love hardcoded, hidden requirements!!!
>
> I'll point out for others who may need to image systems quickly that
> it's often more effective, especially in terms of speed and external
> bandwidth, to use an internal mirror as you did. I'll also point out
> that it can be awfully handy to keep such a mirror up-to-date and use
> it your local configurations. I publish such scripts at
> https://github.com/nkadel/nkadel-rsync-scripts, in case anyone else
> wants them.
>
> I'll also mention my old habit in ks.cfg files of doing this, to hang
> onto the actual ks.cfg instead of the confused and '%pre' and
'%post'
> stripped, anaconda reverse engineered oddness in
> /root/anaconda-ks.cfg.
>
>     %pre
>      cp -f /tmp/ks.cfg /mnt/sysimage/root/ks.cfg
>     %end
> _______________________________________________
>
>
Nico,
   I wrote tutorials on how to do this when I was using xen. I haven't used
these tutorials in a couple of years but they worked then so they should
still work now.  This is for an automated CentOS 6 (x86_64).

http://grantmcwilliams.com/item/538-centos-6-virtual-machine-64-bit-installation-on-xen

Grant McWilliams
http://grantmcwilliams.com/

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use
Windows."
Now they have two problems.
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On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 9:11 PM, Grant McWilliams
<grantmasterflash at gmail.com> wrote:
> Nico,
>    I wrote tutorials on how to do this when I was using xen. I haven't
used
> these tutorials in a couple of years but they worked then so they should
> still work now.  This is for an automated CentOS 6 (x86_64).
>
>
http://grantmcwilliams.com/item/538-centos-6-virtual-machine-64-bit-installation-on-xen
>
> Grant McWilliams
> http://grantmcwilliams.com/
I'm reading your notes. They're not bad, but they make me nervous in a
number of ways.

* VM's should *always* be assigned stable, but unique MAC's for the
network devices. This prevents the udev settings, and tendency of
tools like NetworkManager and anaconda from being unable to configure
network devices that they've stored hard-coded MAC addresses for.
There is *no* GUI or built-in command line tool for clearing these,
you have to do it by hand. There are various ways to deal with this,
but allowing the virt-install or similar tools to assign a MAC *once*
and then locking it down in the config file is quite effective.

Pre-planning your MAC addresses also allows DHCP reservations to be
configured, very useful for PXE setups and stabilizing your DNS and
firewall configuraitons.

* Don't install rpmforge anymore by default: it's effectively moribund
since Dag Weiers moved on to other projects, and isn't getting
updates. You can now install EPEL with 'yum install epel-release, and
unless you need tools that overlap with CentOS tools it's much safer.
(I wrote the last few subversion RPM's for RPMforge, and have been
waiting way too long for updates to be accepted.)

* Frankly, the use of 'virt-install' with a "--location"
setting to
point to the online kernels from a relevant source repository, and
some options to select a disk image size,  seems to skip gracefully
over all the "manually build your disk image" and "manually edit
your
/etc/xen/[config] file..
>
> Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll
use
> Windows."
> Now they have two problems.
>
>
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