Fedora xen - Aug 2008 - Installing FC9 guest on Centos 5 fails installing OO writer2latex

I''ve tried three times to install Fedora Core 9 as a PV guest on a 
Centos 5 host.  Every time, it gets most of the way through the install, 
and then hangs on installing openoffice.org-writer2latex-0.5-2.fc9.i386.

The first two attempts were with the official FC9 DVD, and for the third 
I tried the Unity respin from 7/18/08.

Does anyone know what the problem could be?  Alternatively, what useful 
information could I provide to this list?  Thanks.

Ken

On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 2:42 PM, Kenneth Tanzer <ktanzer@desc.org>
wrote:
> I''ve tried three times to install Fedora Core 9 as a PV guest on a
Centos 5
> host.  Every time, it gets most of the way through the install, and then
> hangs on installing openoffice.org-writer2latex-0.5-2.fc9.i386.
>
> The first two attempts were with the official FC9 DVD, and for the third I
> tried the Unity respin from 7/18/08.
>
> Does anyone know what the problem could be?  Alternatively, what useful
> information could I provide to this list?  Thanks.
>
During the install, switch over to the console (Ctrl+)Alt+F1, (Ctrl+)Alt+F2 ...

Look for errors, also you can use that to that console, check free space etc.

Hope that helps,
Todd
> Ken
>
> --
> Fedora-xen mailing list
> Fedora-xen@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-xen
>


-- 
Todd Deshane
http://todddeshane.net
check out our book: http://runningxen.com

Hi,

i tried same scenario as you several times without success. Unfortunately it
stops because of kernel panic.
XEN Kernel on Fedora 9 is newer and has some features which dom0 - CentOs
with lustiest xen kernel does not understand. :(

David


On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 8:48 PM, Todd Deshane <deshantm@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 2:42 PM, Kenneth Tanzer <ktanzer@desc.org>
wrote:
> > I''ve tried three times to install Fedora Core 9 as a PV guest
on a Centos
> 5
> > host.  Every time, it gets most of the way through the install, and
then
> > hangs on installing openoffice.org-writer2latex-0.5-2.fc9.i386.
> >
> > The first two attempts were with the official FC9 DVD, and for the
third
> I
> > tried the Unity respin from 7/18/08.
> >
> > Does anyone know what the problem could be?  Alternatively, what
useful
> > information could I provide to this list?  Thanks.
> >
>
> During the install, switch over to the console (Ctrl+)Alt+F1, (Ctrl+)Alt+F2
> ...
>
> Look for errors, also you can use that to that console, check free space
> etc.
>
> Hope that helps,
> Todd
>
> > Ken
> >
> > --
> > Fedora-xen mailing list
> > Fedora-xen@redhat.com
> > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-xen
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Todd Deshane
> http://todddeshane.net
> check out our book: http://runningxen.com
>
> --
> Fedora-xen mailing list
> Fedora-xen@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-xen
>

Thanks.  Does that mean FC9 on Centos just can''t work, at least for
now?

The VM guest is currently stuck, and won''t shut down, even with a 
destroy.  I get the message below.  Is there any way to get rid of it 
short of rebooting?

Ken

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/virt-manager/virtManager/engine.py", line 485, in 
shutdown_domain
    vm.shutdown()
  File "/usr/share/virt-manager/virtManager/domain.py", line 375, in 
shutdown
    self.vm.shutdown()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/libvirt.py", line 389, in
shutdown
    if ret == -1: raise libvirtError (''virDomainShutdown()
failed'',
dom=self)
libvirtError: virDomainShutdown() failed internal error domain 
information incomplete, missing name


David Hláčik wrote:
> Hi,
>
> i tried same scenario as you several times without success. Unfortunately
it
> stops because of kernel panic.
> XEN Kernel on Fedora 9 is newer and has some features which dom0 - CentOs
> with lustiest xen kernel does not understand. :(
>
> David
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 8:48 PM, Todd Deshane <deshantm@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>   
>> On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 2:42 PM, Kenneth Tanzer <ktanzer@desc.org>
wrote:
>>     
>>> I''ve tried three times to install Fedora Core 9 as a PV
guest on a Centos
>>>       
>> 5
>>     
>>> host.  Every time, it gets most of the way through the install, and
then
>>> hangs on installing openoffice.org-writer2latex-0.5-2.fc9.i386.
>>>
>>> The first two attempts were with the official FC9 DVD, and for the
third
>>>       
>> I
>>     
>>> tried the Unity respin from 7/18/08.
>>>
>>> Does anyone know what the problem could be?  Alternatively, what
useful
>>> information could I provide to this list?  Thanks.
>>>
>>>       
>> During the install, switch over to the console (Ctrl+)Alt+F1,
(Ctrl+)Alt+F2
>> ...
>>
>> Look for errors, also you can use that to that console, check free
space
>> etc.
>>
>> Hope that helps,
>> Todd
>>
>>     
>>> Ken
>>>
>>> --
>>> Fedora-xen mailing list
>>> Fedora-xen@redhat.com
>>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-xen
>>>
>>>       
>>
>> --
>> Todd Deshane
>> http://todddeshane.net
>> check out our book: http://runningxen.com
>>
>> --
>> Fedora-xen mailing list
>> Fedora-xen@redhat.com
>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-xen
>>
>>     
>
>

On Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:42:40 -0700
Kenneth Tanzer <ktanzer@desc.org> wrote:
> I''ve tried three times to install Fedora Core 9 as a PV guest on a
> Centos 5 host.  Every time, it gets most of the way through the install, 
> and then hangs on installing openoffice.org-writer2latex-0.5-2.fc9.i386.
I had enormous problems with lots of installs using an older Xen
and file: devices for virtual disks. I would constantly see the sort
of stuff you describe with the VM going funny in the head during
heavy I/O (like installing openoffice - that was a favorite place for
it to die).

I switched the host machine to debian etch, and built what was
at the time the latest mercurial version of 3.2.1 from source, booting
the host with the dom0 kernel built during the Xen build from
scratch.

I then switched all my virtual disks to tap:aio: instead of file:
and since those changes, everything has been working great. No
install problems, no mysterious VM crashes when cron kicks off
makewhatis, etc.

On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 11:57 -0700, Kenneth Tanzer wrote:
> The VM guest is currently stuck, and won''t shut down, even with a 
> destroy.  I get the message below.  Is there any way to get rid of it 
> short of rebooting?
As far as removing the domU. You might try ''xm destroy'' and/or
''xm
delete'' on the cmd line and then restart xend if ''virsh list
--all'' or
the virt-manager GUI is not showing what you would expect.

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-June/msg00059.html

On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 20:50 +0200, David Hláčik wrote:
> i tried same scenario as you several times without success.
> Unfortunately it stops because of kernel panic.
> XEN Kernel on Fedora 9 is newer and has some features which dom0 -
> CentOs with lustiest xen kernel does not understand. :(
You should file a bug if you see anything like this. We certainly expect
RHEL5/CentOS Xen to be able to run pv_ops kernels.

Cheers,
Mark.

Thanks to all who offered responses.  I tried this again, using an LVM 
volume instead of a file-backed disk.  It still hangs again at the exact 
same spot.  Again, the mouse is not responsive, nor does it respond to 
ctrl-alt-f1, f2, etc.  The VM manager shows it is still running, and 
using about 12.5% of my CPU (although it fluctuates a bit).  The machine 
also still responds to pings.

Any other suggestions, either for fixing or useful troubleshooting/error 
reporting, or should I just give this up as a lost cause?  Thanks in 
advance.

Ken

Tom Horsley wrote:
> On Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:42:40 -0700
> Kenneth Tanzer <ktanzer@desc.org> wrote:
>
>   
>> I''ve tried three times to install Fedora Core 9 as a PV guest
on a
>> Centos 5 host.  Every time, it gets most of the way through the
install,
>> and then hangs on installing
openoffice.org-writer2latex-0.5-2.fc9.i386.
>>     
>
> I had enormous problems with lots of installs using an older Xen
> and file: devices for virtual disks. I would constantly see the sort
> of stuff you describe with the VM going funny in the head during
> heavy I/O (like installing openoffice - that was a favorite place for
> it to die).
>
> I switched the host machine to debian etch, and built what was
> at the time the latest mercurial version of 3.2.1 from source, booting
> the host with the dom0 kernel built during the Xen build from
> scratch.
>
> I then switched all my virtual disks to tap:aio: instead of file:
> and since those changes, everything has been working great. No
> install problems, no mysterious VM crashes when cron kicks off
> makewhatis, etc.
>
> --
> Fedora-xen mailing list
> Fedora-xen@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-xen
>

On Tue, 12 Aug 2008, Kenneth Tanzer wrote:
> Thanks to all who offered responses.  I tried this again, using an LVM
volume
> instead of a file-backed disk.  It still hangs again at the exact same
spot.
> Again, the mouse is not responsive, nor does it respond to ctrl-alt-f1, f2,
> etc.  The VM manager shows it is still running, and using about 12.5% of my
> CPU (although it fluctuates a bit).  The machine also still responds to 
> pings.
Why don''t you install it without the Office packages an add them back
in
post-install?

As to the problems you are seeing, how much memory does your VM 
machine have? I remember running into problems doing an upgrade on a low 
memory system, I think via http, where it ended up continually swapping, 
having downloaded the big openoffice.org-core package to ramdisk and then 
was trying to install it (this was non-xen and a few Fedoras ago).

Incidentally I installed Fedora 9 on Centos 5 earlier today so it is 
certainly possible (unlike Fedora 10 on Centos 5).

 	Michael Young

The host machine has 12GB of RAM.  I tried increasing the guest to 1G/2G 
(min/max), but that didn''t help.  By skipping the OO packages, though,
I
was able to get FC9 installed and running.  (Thank you!)

On a related issue, several times I''ve had xen problems that I could 
only fix by rebooting the (host) machine.  Particularly when these guest 
machines have gone bad, the VM manager, although not actually frozen, is 
unable to do anything useful.  If I disconnect from the host, it is 
unable to reconnect.  In some cases, xm was still useful, although in at 
least one case I repeatedly got back:

Error: Device 0 not connected

For all these problems, I tried restarting libvirtd, xend and 
xendomains, to no effect.  Is there anything else that can be done to 
solve these xen problems, short of rebooting?

Thanks.

Ken

M A Young wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Aug 2008, Kenneth Tanzer wrote:
>
>> Thanks to all who offered responses.  I tried this again, using an 
>> LVM volume instead of a file-backed disk.  It still hangs again at 
>> the exact same spot. Again, the mouse is not responsive, nor does it 
>> respond to ctrl-alt-f1, f2, etc.  The VM manager shows it is still 
>> running, and using about 12.5% of my CPU (although it fluctuates a 
>> bit).  The machine also still responds to pings.
>
> Why don''t you install it without the Office packages an add them
back
> in post-install?
>
> As to the problems you are seeing, how much memory does your VM 
> machine have? I remember running into problems doing an upgrade on a 
> low memory system, I think via http, where it ended up continually 
> swapping, having downloaded the big openoffice.org-core package to 
> ramdisk and then was trying to install it (this was non-xen and a few 
> Fedoras ago).
>
> Incidentally I installed Fedora 9 on Centos 5 earlier today so it is 
> certainly possible (unlike Fedora 10 on Centos 5).
>
>     Michael Young
>
> -- 
> Fedora-xen mailing list
> Fedora-xen@redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-xen

On Tue, 12 Aug 2008, Kenneth Tanzer wrote:
> The host machine has 12GB of RAM.  I tried increasing the guest to 1G/2G 
> (min/max), but that didn''t help.  By skipping the OO packages,
though, I was
> able to get FC9 installed and running.  (Thank you!)
If leaving out the OO packages fixes it then it does look like you are 
running into some sort of low-memory situation, though 1Gb should be more 
than enough (I was seeing the problems I was referring to with something 
like 256Mb). The only other explanation I can think of is that you are 
installing without any swap space allocated, since that would increase the 
pressure on whatever memory you did have.

 	Michael Young