Xen users - Aug 2007 - mounting CentOS formatted file-backed images

As noted in the subject, I''m trying to mount a file-backed CentOS 5
image.
CentOS 5 partitions and formats the image itself (when installing via 
kickstart) , which might prove difficult to deal with.  I''m trying to
get
read-only access to file-backed Cent images, i.e. for backup purposes.  Is 
this possible?

Regards


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You can use kpartx or lomount to mount partitions that are within a guest 
image.

Never mount a guest''s data without first shutting down the guest; at
best it
can confuse the mounting OS and at worst it can trash the filesystem 
completely!

If you need to mount things whilst the guest is running, it might be better to 
use some sort of snapshotting (maybe ddsnap or LVM snapshots) to make the 
image dom0 accesses be independent of the one the guest is using.

Btw, if you save the guest to disk and then back up its save file along with  
a copy of its disk image then you''ll have a complete representation of
all
the data that was cached in memory and saved on the disk.

Making sure you do this stuff safely is quite important, so please ask if you 
have any further questions, and make sure you''ve tested your setup with
machines that don''t matter to you!

Cheers,
Mark

-- 
Dave: Just a question. What use is a unicyle with no seat?  And no pedals!
Mark: To answer a question with a question: What use is a skateboard?
Dave: Skateboards have wheels.
Mark: My wheel has a wheel!

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Hello all, a new comer to the list.

I have loaded Xen server on a OpenSUSE 10.2 box and can create and run a
guest OpenSuse 10.2 VM ok.

But I have some trouble in setting up a guest VM using a looped image
file that contains the root file
system that I copied from an existing Suse 10.2/10/9 installation, or
even RedHat EL4 installation.

I tried the method described in the Xen V3.0 Users'' manual to create an
image file, mount it, and copy all the system files under the root
directory on an existing Suse or RedHat installation.

But when I try to start the guest VM, I always get 

   Boot loader didn''t return any data

It appears that I need some steps to make the copied image bootable.

Did try to follow the points given on Page 77 to use losetup /dev/loop0
image and use grub> setup (hd0), but it complains "Files not
found".

So look like some steps are missing here.

Anyone has some success or any idea about this?

Many thanks.

Peter

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