Xen users - Dec 2006 - Booting an existing Windows XP system as domU.

I am trying to do something that is not clearly documented. I could find
little on the mailing list as to whether this could be done.

The normal documented way of booting an XP dom is to create a image
file.

However, I wanted the domU under hvm to boot a working XP installation
under another partition.

Here is my critical configuration line.

disk = [ ''phy:/dev/sda2,ioemu:hda,w'' ]

This almost works. My dom0 is working and the domU for XP starts.

I see the emulated vga card bios info, the drive info,

But then the boot hangs at:

"Booting from hard disk ..."

That is pretty good, it seem like XenU is working but it doesn''t boot
the drive.

1)Is it possible to directly create a DomU of an existing system on a
partition?

2)If so, is there documentation somewhere? I suspect that hvmloader
somehow has to run the boot record or something.

Edward Ing

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On Thu, 2006-12-14 at 22:55 -0500, Edward Ing wrote:
> I am trying to do something that is not clearly documented. I could find
> little on the mailing list as to whether this could be done.
> 
> The normal documented way of booting an XP dom is to create a image
> file.
> 
> However, I wanted the domU under hvm to boot a working XP installation
> under another partition.
> 
> Here is my critical configuration line.
> 
> disk = [ ''phy:/dev/sda2,ioemu:hda,w'' ]
> 
> This almost works. My dom0 is working and the domU for XP starts.
> 
> I see the emulated vga card bios info, the drive info,
> 
> But then the boot hangs at:
> 
> "Booting from hard disk ..."
> 
> That is pretty good, it seem like XenU is working but it doesn''t
boot
> the drive.
> 
> 1)Is it possible to directly create a DomU of an existing system on a
> partition?
> 
yes apparently. I havent got this working the way id like either, but I
note that your xp partion is on sda2.

sda2 has no master boot record. Also if sda1 is a windows system, the
boot and system files (IRC boot.ini, ntdetect, ntldr)  are prob on that.
My intent is to set up a virtual image to boot from with grub on and
chain load to the physical image, but i just havent had time to play.

the other issue that i havent come to grips with is that byte 0x1c (irc)
of sda2 needs to tell windows where the first useful sector is. I think
this will get confused in xen, as your config is not acknowledging that
the rest of the physical hard disk exists and I believe that is relative
to the start of sda - not sure if this is an real issue or not, but i
dont think it can work for both booting physically AND booting in xen,
unless your config sufficiently mirrors the phyiscal setup of things.

sorry to only offer guesses, but heres hoping it brings someone that
really knows out of the woodwork. 

Glenn
> 2)If so, is there documentation somewhere? I suspect that hvmloader
> somehow has to run the boot record or something.
> 
> Edward Ing
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
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