Xen users - Jan 2006 - XEN for Debian Installer development

Hi,

I''m tweaking Debian Installer and I use VWware to test it. I am courius
if
XEN could be suitable for the testing of Debian Installer. Is there anybody
who tried it?

What I need is that I make an ISO image which is booted in virtual machine
(DomU). The virtual machine handles an ISO image as an ordinery CD-ROM.
Then I need to connect to several consoles (Like Alt+F1, Alt+F2, in
normal Linux) in the virtual machine.

I have already tried XEN live demo CD, but I am still not shure XEN is able
to do what I need.

Thanks for advices
              Ondrej

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com 
> [mailto:xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com] On Behalf Of 
> Ondra Medek
> Sent: 04 January 2006 11:05
> To: xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> Subject: [Xen-users] XEN for Debian Installer development
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I''m tweaking Debian Installer and I use VWware to test it. I 
> am courius if XEN could be suitable for the testing of Debian 
> Installer. Is there anybody who tried it?
> 
> What I need is that I make an ISO image which is booted in 
> virtual machine (DomU). The virtual machine handles an ISO 
> image as an ordinery CD-ROM.
> Then I need to connect to several consoles (Like Alt+F1, 
> Alt+F2, in normal Linux) in the virtual machine.
> 
> I have already tried XEN live demo CD, but I am still not 
> shure XEN is able to do what I need.
It doesn''t work unless you have hardware virtual machine support, HVM,
(AMD SVM or Intel VT) in the processor. The para-virtualization that Xen
implements requires the OS to be modified, and it does not support
booting straight from a physical device. 

It should be possible to boot from a CD-ROM in a HVM system, and install
onto a virtual partition. 

--
Mats
> 
> Thanks for advices
>               Ondrej
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> 
> 

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Ondra Medek wrote:
> What I need is that I make an ISO image which is booted in virtual machine
> (DomU). The virtual machine handles an ISO image as an ordinery CD-ROM.
> Then I need to connect to several consoles (Like Alt+F1, Alt+F2, in
> normal Linux) in the virtual machine.
> 
> I have already tried XEN live demo CD, but I am still not shure XEN is able
> to do what I need.
You might want to give qemu a spin, as it does full virtualization like
vmware, not para-virtualization like Xen. It is very easy to pass an ISO
file to qemu to boot from.
That said, I am unclear if an ISO file can be passed as a bootable ro
VBD to a Xen DomU like you want, but if it is possible I''d love to see
a
working example.
-- 
Some days it''s just not worth chewing through the restraints...
Mark D. Foster, CISSP <mark@foster.cc>  http://mark.foster.cc/


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