Xen users - Apr 2008 - Sup guys, I''m a Xen noob, I have plenty of questions...

I''m running Fedora 8 on an E6300 OC''d to 2.5 GHZ, 2 gigs of
DDR2 Ram, around
950GB on a raid0.  I have 2 main partitions, 600GB nfts for windows xp and
300GB ext3 for Fedora 8, and 2GB swap.  Anyhow, I use Fedora most of the
time.  So here is what I''ve done so far.  I yum installed kernel-xen
xen and
virt-manager.  I rebooted to the xen os.  When I booted into the Desktop, I
noticed that my windows were all out of whack (I have compiz fusion
installed on my regular Fedora 8 OS).  So I deactivated desktop effects and
everything worked fine.  I noticed that my kmod-nvidia driver was no longer
installed.  Can you guys explain what this OS is?  It seems to be a
duplicated of my normal Fedora 8 OS but only that my nvidia driver
isn''t
loaded.  So, if I wanna run an OS and a virtual OS, I have to boot up to
this OS? the one with xen at the end?  I tried installing the kmod-nvidia
driver but it didn''t install because it said that the kernel was
already
installed.

Ok, so I used the gui virtual machine manager and created a virtual OS of
Fedora 7, I made it paravirtual, gave it 10GB, and 512MB of Ram, and created
a virtual network.  After it installed I could see the blue console.  Now
I''m a bit confused.  Is the Installation complete?  It never said that
the
installation was complete, but nothing is happening.  What can I do with
this blue console?  How do I run programs on it?  I mess with the virtual
machine manager and see how my new virtual os is taking up cpu usage.  So I
rebooted the computer back to the original Fedora 8 OS.  I try using virtual
machine manager, but it won''t connect, it says that my libvirtdaemon
hasn''t
started.  So I reboot to the Fedora 7 xen OS.  I go to virtual machine
manager and try to connect to my virtual os.  It starts up and it says
it''s
running, but there''s no cpu usage.  I check the console, and it says
it''s
currently unavailable.  It won''t let me pause the virtual os, says that
the
POST operation failed, bootloader didn''t return any data.  What do I
need to
do to get the virtual os to start running again?

Much thanks for helping out guys.  I''m just confused.  I wanted to use
a
virtual os to setup and ftp server, but I just don''t see how one can do
so
with that blue console.  I''m obviously missing something.  Should I
have
gone virtual instead of paravirtual?  Also, I''ve heard that once I get
the
virtual os running, I can switch between my regular Fedora 8 OS and my
virtual Fedora 7 OS with a simple click of the mouse.  Is this true with Xen
or should I use another virtualization program.  Also, I have the Vanderpool
Technology activated in the bios, fyi.  Also, can I have a virtual os of
windows xp?  Like where it had asked me about the installation media, if I
had provided windows xp media, would it have worked?  Also, how do I tie a
linux install dvd to nfs?  I know that in order to do this, I need to find
out where my dvd is mounted.  How do I find that out?  I''ve been going
to
/dev and searching there, how do I know which one is for my dvd player? 
Would it be /dev/dr0/ /dev/sdc?  Anyhow, thanks.

I''ve been retrying the virtual os installation and a blue screen comes
up
and asks me to put in the web server and fedora directory.  I''ve been
using
http://fedora.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/fedora/linux/releases/7/Fedora/i386/os/,
but I guess I need another one.  Any of you guys have any media http links
to Fedora 7 or 8?
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Hello,

I will try and answer some of your questions as best I can.

First there will usually be some problems with the RPM xen kernels that
are installed through YUM. If you want a custom setup (with certain
drivers) you should try compiling from source or trying a kernel
recompile and ensure that the Graphics card drivers are compiling as
modules as well as any other modules relating to your graphics card. 

The best thing to do is boot up each system then do an lsmod in each and
compare.

As for your other question regarding the Fedora VM, did you see the
installation process go through? From a console type "xm list" to view
the VMs and type xm console <whatever your vm is named, not Domain0>
then press enter to see if it is live.

If it isn''t then it didn''t install properly. I personally
don''t use
virt-manager because the command line works just as well or even better.
That blue console seems to be just the default and probably isn''t even
connected to the newly created VM.

Virt-manager will not work without a Xen Hypervisor enabled kernel (so
the kernel you boot with -xen on the end is the proper one). 

For your ftp setup it is probably best that you do a Paravirtualized
environment. I have some documentation on it and there is tons around
the web, what OS were you thinking of installing? There are tons of
guides on installing a Debian guest using xen-tools.

Yes, you can have a virtual instance of Windows XP. Google is your
friend for that one but if you get really stuck, the very knowledgeable
people in here can give you a hand for sure.

An easy way of finding your DVD device would be to pop a CD in the drive
and when it opens in Gnome or KDE press open to view files (or whatever
it is called) then go to a console and type "mount". It will list a
bunch of things but there should be one that will say something with
/media/DvdTitle if I am not mistaken and the device name should be
before that.

Good luck! I hope I answered most of your questions, if you have any
more or would like me to be clearer, let me know.

Cheers,
Tait Clarridge



-----Original Message-----
From: xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com
[mailto:xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com] On Behalf Of trist007
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 10:01 AM
To: xen-users@lists.xensource.com
Subject: [Xen-users] Sup guys, I''m a Xen noob, I have plenty of
questions...


I''m running Fedora 8 on an E6300 OC''d to 2.5 GHZ, 2 gigs of
DDR2 Ram,
around
950GB on a raid0.  I have 2 main partitions, 600GB nfts for windows xp
and
300GB ext3 for Fedora 8, and 2GB swap.  Anyhow, I use Fedora most of the
time.  So here is what I''ve done so far.  I yum installed kernel-xen
xen
and
virt-manager.  I rebooted to the xen os.  When I booted into the
Desktop, I
noticed that my windows were all out of whack (I have compiz fusion
installed on my regular Fedora 8 OS).  So I deactivated desktop effects
and
everything worked fine.  I noticed that my kmod-nvidia driver was no
longer
installed.  Can you guys explain what this OS is?  It seems to be a
duplicated of my normal Fedora 8 OS but only that my nvidia driver
isn''t
loaded.  So, if I wanna run an OS and a virtual OS, I have to boot up to
this OS? the one with xen at the end?  I tried installing the
kmod-nvidia
driver but it didn''t install because it said that the kernel was
already
installed.

Ok, so I used the gui virtual machine manager and created a virtual OS
of
Fedora 7, I made it paravirtual, gave it 10GB, and 512MB of Ram, and
created
a virtual network.  After it installed I could see the blue console.
Now
I''m a bit confused.  Is the Installation complete?  It never said that
the
installation was complete, but nothing is happening.  What can I do with
this blue console?  How do I run programs on it?  I mess with the
virtual
machine manager and see how my new virtual os is taking up cpu usage.
So I
rebooted the computer back to the original Fedora 8 OS.  I try using
virtual
machine manager, but it won''t connect, it says that my libvirtdaemon
hasn''t
started.  So I reboot to the Fedora 7 xen OS.  I go to virtual machine
manager and try to connect to my virtual os.  It starts up and it says
it''s
running, but there''s no cpu usage.  I check the console, and it says
it''s
currently unavailable.  It won''t let me pause the virtual os, says that
the
POST operation failed, bootloader didn''t return any data.  What do I
need to
do to get the virtual os to start running again?

Much thanks for helping out guys.  I''m just confused.  I wanted to use
a
virtual os to setup and ftp server, but I just don''t see how one can do
so
with that blue console.  I''m obviously missing something.  Should I
have
gone virtual instead of paravirtual?  Also, I''ve heard that once I get
the
virtual os running, I can switch between my regular Fedora 8 OS and my
virtual Fedora 7 OS with a simple click of the mouse.  Is this true with
Xen
or should I use another virtualization program.  Also, I have the
Vanderpool
Technology activated in the bios, fyi.  Also, can I have a virtual os of
windows xp?  Like where it had asked me about the installation media, if
I
had provided windows xp media, would it have worked?  Also, how do I tie
a
linux install dvd to nfs?  I know that in order to do this, I need to
find
out where my dvd is mounted.  How do I find that out?  I''ve been going
to
/dev and searching there, how do I know which one is for my dvd player? 
Would it be /dev/dr0/ /dev/sdc?  Anyhow, thanks.

I''ve been retrying the virtual os installation and a blue screen comes
up
and asks me to put in the web server and fedora directory.  I''ve been
using
http://fedora.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/fedora/linux/releases/7/Fedora/i3
86/os/,
but I guess I need another one.  Any of you guys have any media http
links
to Fedora 7 or 8?
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uestions...-tp16441883p16441883.html
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> xen and virt-manager.  I rebooted to the xen os.  When I booted into the
> Desktop, I noticed that my windows were all out of whack (I have compiz
> fusion installed on my regular Fedora 8 OS).  So I deactivated desktop
> effects and everything worked fine.  I noticed that my kmod-nvidia driver
> was no longer installed.  Can you guys explain what this OS is?  It seems
> to be a duplicated of my normal Fedora 8 OS but only that my nvidia driver
> isn''t loaded. 
When you boot normally, you''re running Linux on the bare metal
hardware.  When
you boot into the Xen-enabled system you''re running XenLinux in a
paravirtual
machine on top of Xen.  The virtual machine that comes up when you boot the 
system (the one you see start up and that you are interacting with) is 
called "domain 0" - it''s privileged to access all the
hardware, so it looks a
lot like your normal OS.

Because you''re running paravirt Linux, a different kernel is used. 
NVidia
haven''t supported their kernel module for running under XenLinux so
that''s
why your 3D acceleration is broken and the module not loaded.  2D 
acceleration should still work.

Some people have had success with patching NVidia''s module wrapper code
and
recompiling it in order to get 3D running in dom0, so that might be worth 
trying at some point.
> So, if I wanna run an OS and a virtual OS, I have to boot up 
> to this OS? the one with xen at the end?  I tried installing the
> kmod-nvidia driver but it didn''t install because it said that the
kernel
> was already installed.
You need to use the Xen-enabled boot option to start Xen and XenLinux.  This 
is just starting your normal Linux distro with the difference that it''s
running Xen and a XenLinux kernel instead of a standard bare metal Linux.  
Does that make sense?
> Ok, so I used the gui virtual machine manager and created a virtual OS of
> Fedora 7, I made it paravirtual, gave it 10GB, and 512MB of Ram, and
> created a virtual network.  After it installed I could see the blue
> console.  Now I''m a bit confused.  Is the Installation complete? 
"Blue console" sounds like the text-mode stages of the installation
process.
virt-manager sets things up so you have to run through an Anaconda-based 
installation process, just as you would have to for a physical machine.

You need to supply it with a network path for it to install from; after that 
it''ll start up the friendlier graphical Anaconda installer and you can
set up
all the things you need before running through a (relatively) normal 
installation process.
> So I
> rebooted the computer back to the original Fedora 8 OS.  I try using
virtual
> machine manager, but it won''t connect, it says that my
libvirtdaemon hasn''t
> started.
virt-manager will only work for Xen virtual machines when your computer is 
booted into Xen.
> So I reboot to the Fedora 7 xen OS.  I go to
> virtual machine manager and try to connect to my virtual os.  It starts up
> and it says it''s running, but there''s no cpu usage.  I
check the console,
> and it says it''s currently unavailable.  It won''t let me
pause the virtual
> os, says that the POST operation failed, bootloader didn''t return
any data.
>  What do I need to do to get the virtual os to start running again?
Sounds like the install failed.  Just delete that OS and start an install 
again.
> I''m just confused.  I wanted to use a
> virtual os to setup and ftp server, but I just don''t see how one
can do so
> with that blue console.  I''m obviously missing something.  Should
I have
> gone virtual instead of paravirtual?
You could do, but it''s not really necessary for a Xen-aware Linux
distro like
Fedora, since it already has good support for running paravirt.  Fully 
virtual is useful for running operating systems without Xen support (such as 
Windows).
> Also, I''ve heard that once I get the 
> virtual os running, I can switch between my regular Fedora 8 OS and my
> virtual Fedora 7 OS with a simple click of the mouse.  Is this true with
> Xen or should I use another virtualization program.
By default, virt-manager will display your OS in a window like an application.  
You can fullscreen that window although the version I use doesn''t scale
up
the VM''s display to fit your screen.

You can also configure things so that you can use any VNC viewer you want to 
view the virtual machine''s screen.  I''ve enjoyed using
KDE''s "krdc" client,
which can scale virtual machines to be really small for when you''re not
using
them and also has a decent fullscreen mode.

Here''s a screenshot of krdc''s scaling capabilities:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~maw48/tiny-virtual-machines.png

Note several Linux distros running in both console mode and graphical.  Some 
of the VMs are paravirt, others (see the Windows guest in the upper right) 
are fully virt.
> Also, I have the 
> Vanderpool Technology activated in the bios, fyi.  Also, can I have a
> virtual os of windows xp?
Yes, if you have VT activated you should be able to install a Windows XP Os in 
a full virt virtual machine.
> Like where it had asked me about the 
> installation media, if I had provided windows xp media, would it have
> worked?
Yes, *if* you use full virtualisation.  It won''t work with paravirt.
> Also, how do I tie a linux install dvd to nfs?  I know that in 
> order to do this, I need to find out where my dvd is mounted.  How do I
> find that out?  I''ve been going to /dev and searching there, how
do I know
> which one is for my dvd player? Would it be /dev/dr0/ /dev/sdc?  Anyhow,
> thanks.
It varies.  Many distros will make it available as /dev/dvd.
> I''ve been retrying the virtual os installation and a blue screen
comes up
> and asks me to put in the web server and fedora directory.  I''ve
been using
> http://fedora.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/fedora/linux/releases/7/Fedora/i386/
>os/, but I guess I need another one.  Any of you guys have any media http
> links to Fedora 7 or 8?
This page: http://www.mail-archive.com/fedora-xen%40redhat.com/msg00344.html
suggests that your URL is of the right form.  What errors did you see?  Was 
there a reported error message?  If it just pauses for a while it might just 
be accessing the install media URL and downloading an install image (which 
might take a little while, depending on your network speed).

Cheers,
Mark

-- 
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Now that I''m more informed about Xen, it turned out that the
installation was
not complete.  So now I have another question.  I''m trying to link up
my
Fedora 8 install DVD to an media url in http form.  This is what I''ve
done
so far.
1.  Opened terminal and ran mount.  my dvd device is /dev/sr0 on
media/Fedora 8 i386 DVD
2.  I yum installed httpd
3.  I disabled SElinx a while back fyi
4.  I ran ln -s /media/dvd /var/www/html/fedora and I edited /etc/exports
and included the line /media/dvd *( ro)
5.  I ran /etc/init.d/httpd start
6.  Started installation for a new Xen VM
7.  At the part where I enter install media url I put,
http://myipaddress/fedora/
8.  It said it was an invalid install location
9.  I''m confused about what my ip address really is, I put in
192.168.1.1
and then found my host name with a slightly different ip address that I
used, but then I also tried running, www.whatismyipaddress.com and it showed
a different address.  Which address should I use in the media url path?
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Have you tried http://localhost/fedora?
-Tait

-----Original Message-----
From: xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com
[mailto:xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com] On Behalf Of trist007
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 3:02 PM
To: xen-users@lists.xensource.com
Subject: Re: [Xen-users] Sup guys, I''m a Xen noob, I have plenty
ofquestions...


Now that I''m more informed about Xen, it turned out that the
installation was
not complete.  So now I have another question.  I''m trying to link up
my
Fedora 8 install DVD to an media url in http form.  This is what I''ve
done
so far.
1.  Opened terminal and ran mount.  my dvd device is /dev/sr0 on
media/Fedora 8 i386 DVD
2.  I yum installed httpd
3.  I disabled SElinx a while back fyi
4.  I ran ln -s /media/dvd /var/www/html/fedora and I edited
/etc/exports
and included the line /media/dvd *( ro)
5.  I ran /etc/init.d/httpd start
6.  Started installation for a new Xen VM
7.  At the part where I enter install media url I put,
http://myipaddress/fedora/
8.  It said it was an invalid install location
9.  I''m confused about what my ip address really is, I put in
192.168.1.1
and then found my host name with a slightly different ip address that I
used, but then I also tried running, www.whatismyipaddress.com and it
showed
a different address.  Which address should I use in the media url path?
-- 
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uestions...-tp16441883p16448651.html
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The problem I have is that during the installation it prompts me for the
correct url to get to the stage2.img
I''m using 
http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/releases/7/Fedora/i386/os/images/
as the installation media source url, and the stage2.img file is in that
images folder.  I don''t understand why it''s having trouble
reaching that
file, I mean that whole path leads to it.
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Check for double slashes.. I remember that I had a problem with that
where it would ask me for the server name eg.
http://mirror.superman.bird.plane.net and a directory eg.
pub/fedora/linux/releases/8/Fedora/i386/os/images but the problem was
that it would automatically format the address and make it so there were
some extra slashes so it would tell me it could not find
http://mirror.superman.bird.plane.net//pub/fedora/linux...etc

That said, I created a dummy partition, lets call it hda6, formatted it
with ext3 and downloaded all the cd images into it. During the install I
told to look there.

I have documentation on it if you would like me to email those steps to
you, let me know.

Cheers,
Tait

-----Original Message-----
From: xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com
[mailto:xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com] On Behalf Of trist007
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 9:22 PM
To: xen-users@lists.xensource.com
Subject: Re: [Xen-users] Sup guys, I''m a Xen noob, I have plenty
ofquestions...


The problem I have is that during the installation it prompts me for the
correct url to get to the stage2.img
I''m using 
http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/releases/7/Fedora/i386/os/images/
as the installation media source url, and the stage2.img file is in that
images folder.  I don''t understand why it''s having trouble
reaching that
file, I mean that whole path leads to it.
-- 
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uestions...-tp16441883p16458404.html
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