Xen users - Mar 2007 - FW: Running Windows 2k3 guest in ACPI multi-processor HAL mode (acpi=1)

Hey guys,

I''m using standard openSUSE 10.2 Xen installation and would like to
start a
Windows 2003 Server as guest with SMP support. So Windows would have to be
in ACPI-Multi-Processor HAL mode to support SMP correctly.

Unfortunately the virtual machine crashes every time I try to start the
installation of Windows with acpi=1 in the hvm configuration file. The blue
installation screen appears and a few seconds later the machine dies, I
guess it is the time when Windows Setup loads the ACPI supporting driver.

Installation with acpi=0 just works fine but of course the later machine has
no SMP enabled and therefore is not able to use the 4 assigned processor
cores. I just tried to replace the hal.sll in c:\windows\system32 with the
correct one with ACPI-SMP support and changed acpi=0 to acpi=1 in the vm
configuration file. Still no luck, the machine dies right after the windows
bootscreen appears :-(

So, how can I solve this?
Would it be better with Xen 3.0.4 as the openSUSE 10.2 standard is still
3.0.3 (with some modifications from Novell I think)?

Thanks a lot for your support!


Regards,

Julian Pawlowski


_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users

So I''ve just been contacted by RedHat about OS licensing: they took
down my
name when I told them that doing Xen for RHEL 4 was prohibitively expensive 
with their one license/guest domain, and I was currently using CentOS on 
quite a few systems because of this and because up2date sucks so very hard, 
and because RedHat support is less useful than my own experience and the 
open source venues for particular software (like Xen itself!)

They listened, and called me back to give me pricing for RHEL 5 servers and 
domains. I''ve played with the 4.92 beta, and it''s not bad: the
hypervisor is
still fairly silly in a bunch of ways because it prevents much control over 
the paravirtual environment or with setting up multiple exported images as 
multiple disks in the Xen environment, or with exporting one mountable image 
as one partition instead of building internal partitions. (Useful for some 
tasks, trust me on this!)

But it''s not bad. Anyone else out there planning on using it? 


_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users

On Wed, 14 Mar 2007, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> So I''ve just been contacted by RedHat about OS licensing: they
took down my
> name when I told them that doing Xen for RHEL 4 was prohibitively expensive
> with their one license/guest domain, and I was currently using CentOS on 
> quite a few systems because of this and because up2date sucks so very hard,
> and because RedHat support is less useful than my own experience and the
open
> source venues for particular software (like Xen itself!)
RHEL5 uses yum, not up2date.  An improvement, IMHO.
> They listened, and called me back to give me pricing for RHEL 5 servers and
> domains. I''ve played with the 4.92 beta, and it''s not
bad: the hypervisor is
> still fairly silly in a bunch of ways because it prevents much control over
> the paravirtual environment or with setting up multiple exported images as 
> multiple disks in the Xen environment, or with exporting one mountable
image
> as one partition instead of building internal partitions. (Useful for some 
> tasks, trust me on this!)
As far as I can tell, all of the limitations in the RedHat gui can be 
overcome by using the command line tools;  RedHat includes the standard 
Xen xm tools;  it just has a nice gui on top that can handle a subset of 
the xm tool''s functionality to make things easy.   If you drop to a
shell
prompt, the xm tools work just like on a standard Xen3 install.
> But it''s not bad. Anyone else out there planning on using it?
I have one client that has been using it since beta2;  if you have money 
and don''t have the ability to identify or retain good Linux nerds,
RedHat
is an excellent choice.  The support my client gets is pretty good.

I do not know what this costs, though I imagine it''s quite expensive. 
Still, I''m not complaining about the service (and from me,
that''s
something of a compliment.  I''m a loud and harsh critic of mediocre 
support services.)

Me, I don''t have money, so I''ll try the CentOS 5 variety out,
if
nothing else, then to get some practice.  but I will probably end up 
using slack for my Dom0 and whatever the customer wants for the DomU.

(does anyone use DSL or another embedded distribution for the Dom0?)

_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users

Luke S. Crawford wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Mar 2007, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
>> So I''ve just been contacted by RedHat about OS licensing: they
took
>> down my name when I told them that doing Xen for RHEL 4 was
>> prohibitively expensive with their one license/guest domain, and I
>> was currently using CentOS on quite a few systems because of this
>> and because up2date sucks so very hard, and because RedHat support
>> is less useful than my own experience and the open source venues for
>> particular software (like Xen itself!)
>
> RHEL5 uses yum, not up2date.  An improvement, IMHO.
I think they still *have* up2date. But  they''ve integrated a an
registration
macro into Yum to allow access to their software repositories. Mind you. 
We''ll see how fast it is in practice.
>> They listened, and called me back to give me pricing for RHEL 5
>> servers and domains. I''ve played with the 4.92 beta, and
it''s not
>> bad: the hypervisor is still fairly silly in a bunch of ways because
>> it prevents much control over the paravirtual environment or with
>> setting up multiple exported images as multiple disks in the Xen
>> environment, or with exporting one mountable image as one partition
>> instead of building internal partitions. (Useful for some tasks,
>> trust me on this!)
>
> As far as I can tell, all of the limitations in the RedHat gui can be
> overcome by using the command line tools;  RedHat includes the
> standard Xen xm tools;  it just has a nice gui on top that can handle
> a subset of the xm tool''s functionality to make things easy.   If
you
> drop to a shell prompt, the xm tools work just like on a standard
> Xen3 install.
Sure, I can build and edit a Xen environment by editing the config files 
myself. It''s the GUI that I''d like to have available for the
less skilled or
experienced sys-admin. The lack of complete and well-documented management 
tools for Xen hurts its acceptance: I highly recommend Eric Raymond''s
old
rant about open source GUI''s based on his experience with CUPS, and my
notes
that he added to it, for notes on how to make them better.
>> But it''s not bad. Anyone else out there planning on using it?
>
> I have one client that has been using it since beta2;  if you have
> money and don''t have the ability to identify or retain good Linux
> nerds, RedHat is an excellent choice.  The support my client gets is
> pretty good.
It''s..... expensive for anything more than 30 days if installation
support.
It''s a bit awkward to figure out RedHat pricing: they don''t
like to lay it
out in a single table, but to split it into lots of different tables so you 
have to drill down to find it.
> Me, I don''t have money, so I''ll try the CentOS 5 variety
out, if
> nothing else, then to get some practice.  but I will probably end up
> using slack for my Dom0 and whatever the customer wants for the DomU.
>
> (does anyone use DSL or another embedded distribution for the Dom0?)
I like CentOS. I actually find the open source support for it to be better 
than the commercial support for CentOS, but I''m not asking newbie
questions
or using high-end wildly high-availability platforms of doom. 


_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users