Xen devel - Dec 2004 - XEN 2.0.1/Xenolinux 2.6.9 domain0 not booting on Debian Sarge / P4 Xeon

Hi all
 
I am in the process of upgrading my XEN servers from 2.4 to 2.6 kernels
as I am having better results on 2.6.
 
However one machine (the big daddy) refuses to boot a 2.6.9 xenolinux
kernel. It''s an IBM eSeries xServer x205.
 
I have selected what i think are the appropriate options in menuconfig
but it refuses to boot into dom0. By refuse I mean it initialises the
hypervisor, gets to loading the dom0 kernel and immediately reboots.
There''s no error messages and it doesnt even get to Scrubbing memory.
This machine boots fine into 2.4.27.
 
I have tried various permutations of kernel options and compiled at
least 60 kernels trying to get this to work. All my other machines (none
of which are p4s) upgraded with minimum hassle.
 
I humbly attach my kernel config in the hope i have left something out.
 
Thanks
 
Tom

>	However one machine (the big daddy) refuses to boot a 2.6.9
xenolinux kernel. It''s > an IBM eSeries xServer x205.
	 
>	I have selected what i think are the appropriate options in
menuconfig but it 
> refuses to boot into dom0. By refuse I mean it initialises the
hypervisor, gets to 
> loading the dom0 kernel and immediately reboots. There''s no error
messages and it 
> doesnt even get to Scrubbing memory. This machine boots fine into
2.4.27.

It sounds like its rebooting before it even starts the domain 0 kernel,
so its rather surprising that the kernel version makes a difference.
Perhaps the kernel size has something to do with it?

Are you sure you''re capturing all the boot messages? have you got a
serial line attached?

How much memory has your x205 got? I''m wandering whether something is
going disasterously wrong with the e820 parsing. I still can''t see why
2.4 vs 2.6 should make any difference. Are you sure you''re not using
different Xen versions in the two cases?

ian


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> Hi all
>  
> I am in the process of upgrading my XEN servers from 2.4 to 2.6 kernels
> as I am having better results on 2.6.
>  
> However one machine (the big daddy) refuses to boot a 2.6.9 xenolinux
> kernel. It''s an IBM eSeries xServer x205.
>  
> I have selected what i think are the appropriate options in menuconfig
> but it refuses to boot into dom0. By refuse I mean it initialises the
> hypervisor, gets to loading the dom0 kernel and immediately reboots.
> There''s no error messages and it doesnt even get to Scrubbing
memory.
> This machine boots fine into 2.4.27.
>  
> I have tried various permutations of kernel options and compiled at
> least 60 kernels trying to get this to work. All my other machines (none
> of which are p4s) upgraded with minimum hassle.
>  
> I humbly attach my kernel config in the hope i have left something out.
Can you send us the boot log from Xen (I guess only piossible if you
have a serial line attached). Apart from that, what is the last line
that Xen outputs before rebooting? It sounds like you do not get as
far as actually trying to run DOM0 so it is unlikely anything to do
with your DOM0 configuration.

One thing is that I fixed a nasty DOM0-building bug yesterday. All the
repositories (2.0, 2.0-tetsing, unstable) have the fix so you may want
to get yourself a fresh tree and try again. :-)

 -- Keir


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>It sounds like its rebooting before it even starts the domain 0 kernel,
so its rather surprising that the kernel >version makes a difference.
>Perhaps the kernel size has something to do with it?
>Are you sure you''re capturing all the boot messages? have you got a
serial line attached?
>How much memory has your x205 got? I''m wandering whether something
is
going disasterously wrong with the e820 parsing. I still can''t >see
why
2.4 vs 2.6 should make any difference. Are you sure you''re not using
different Xen versions in the two cases?
>ian
I attatched a serial console to the thing and realised that I actually
wasn''t running the version of Xen I thought I was. I have been
upgrading
my machines from 2.4.27 on 2.0-beta 1430 to 2.6.9 on 2.0.1 and it was
only when I got the serial line attatched that I was actually running
the 1430 patch instead of the later 2.0.1 patch. I must have installed
an earlier version of kernel-patch-xen by mistake. Talk about a paper
bag event!

Everything''s working great and I am still making modifications to the
2.0.1 packages for debian testing. When they work to my satisfaction I
will publish my diffs.

Thanks Kier and Ian for your helpful suggestions.

Tom


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Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. 
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