When I installed SuSE 10.1 XEN it used from my 200 G hard disk: /dev/sda1 3 G for swap (I changed that from 1 G to 3G) /dev/sda5 21G for / /dev/sda6 190G for /home Since my system keeps on crashing with XEN I think about to change the partitioning to: 3 G for swap 1 G for Linux XEN 20 G for / 190 G for /home Any comments on that? 2. Which distribution should I use? Could I just use the demo CD? How to install another Linux (other than SuSE, which seems not to work) _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> > 3 G for swap > 1 G for Linux XEN > 20 G for / > 190 G for /home > > Any comments on that?I disagree with it. I believe most others here will agree with me when I say that LVM is the way to go. It might require some more effort than setting up file-backed domains, but I think you might be seeing why file-backed domains aren''t so great -- they''re neat if you just want to see if the technology works, but not neat if you really plan to *use* it. Regardless, with modern processors, I recommend everyone use LVM, Xen or not. The advantages of using LVM are: 1. Speed - Xen is faster with block devices than file-backed devices. 2. Stability - Some will argue that block devices are more reliable. At least I think so. 3. Scalability - You can seamlessly add storage if you ever need to. LVM will let you create and drop partitions without regard for their order in the partition table, as you would have to worry about with "DOS partitioning". You can extend your partitions as you drop domains or add capacity. I recommend the following configuration: 1. Create two partitions: a. 4G for Linux Xen (less would be possible, but since it isn''t LVM, it isn''t easy to change later..) b. [remaining] for LVM 2. Install your Dom0 distribution into the 4G partition. 3. From within the Dom0 partition: a. Create a VolumeGroup under the LVM partition, name it anything you want (XenDomains for example) - Create a 3G LogicalVolume "swp00" within XenDomains, run "mkswap" against it. - Create a 3G LogicalVolume "swp01" within XenDomains, run "mkswap" against it. - Create a 20G LogicalVolume "dom01" within XenDomains, run "mkext3" against it - Create a reasonably sized "/home" for your dom01, if you wish, but leave room for additional domains. 4. Run in dom0, ''swapon /dev/XenDomains/swp00'' -- also add it to /etc/fstab. 5. Bootstrap/install your DomU onto /dev/XenDomains/dom01, use /dev/XenDomains/swp01 for the domain''s swap. There are tutorials on the web that should fill in the rest... 6. Start your DomU. -- Eric Windisch _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
GUID partition tables provide relief from some of the problems of MSDOS partitions without the complexity of LVM. The other advantage for me is that GPT partitions are easily used with shared disks without the cluster support LVM requires. That''s a requirement for some of my Xen installations. --kyler _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
On Sunday 11 June 2006 8:59 pm, Kyler Laird wrote:> GUID partition tables provide relief from some of the problems of MSDOS > partitions without the complexity of LVM. The other advantage for me is > that GPT partitions are easily used with shared disks without the > cluster support LVM requires. That''s a requirement for some of my Xen > installations.AFAIK, GPT partitions can''t be modified while online; that is, to repartition your shared disk you''d have to stop any process that uses that disks. Am I right? if that''s so, you could just as well use plain LVM. it''s safe to use on a shared disk without any problem, just don''t modify it while shared. if you want to change it, do a "vgchange <name> -an" on all nodes except one, change anything you want, and do a "vgscan; vgchange -ay" on the other nodes. -- Javier _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Javier Guerra <javier@guerrag.com> writes:>AFAIK, GPT partitions can''t be modified while online; that is, to repartiti>on=20 >your shared disk you''d have to stop any process that uses that disks. Am I>=20 >right?No, I regularly repartition on the fly. That''s the main reason that I switched my latest Xen host to GPT. It''s a small single system at a colo. provider. It already had drives partitioned with msdos tables. I converted it to run Xen and I was going to leave the drives with msdos partitioning but I got tired of rebooting everytime I made a change (even when nothing was using the disk!). I switched to GPT and it''s no longer a problem.>if that''s so, you could just as well use plain LVM. it''s safe to use on a>=20 >shared disk without any problem, just don''t modify it while shared. if you>=20 >want to change it, do a "vgchange <name> -an" on all nodes except one, chan>ge=20 >anything you want, and do a "vgscan; vgchange -ay" on the other nodes.That''s good to know. That''s not so different from running parted with "set 1 boot off" to get the OS to re-read the GPT tables as I do now when I make a change on a different machine. Maybe I''ll look at LVM again. Oh, one more little tidbit that I just learned but is probably obvious to everyone else. I started using GPT by simply running parted and labeling a disk. It just worked...but it didn''t. When I rebooted I found that the OS didn''t see all of the partitions. I thought that this was simply an ATA over Ethernet problem so I lived with it by using "parted -s /dev/hdx set 1 boot off" as part of my startup. On this simple system that I just created I''m not using ATA over Ethernet but I still had this problem. When I had first looked at advanced partition selection in the kernel I saw this help text Say Y here if you would like to use hard disks under Linux which were partitioned under an operating system running on a different architecture than your Linux system. and decided I didn''t need it. After all, I wasn''t using disks partitioned on a different architecture. Well, I finally decided to try enabling this and I saw "EFI GUID Partition support". I enabled that and now my system recognizes the partitions without the help of parted. --kyler _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users