Xen users - Oct 2008 - debian, black screen when booting xen hypervisor higher than 3.0.3

Hi,
  for some reasong, I can''t get xen hypervisor 3.4,3.3 or 3.2 (debian
or
compiled) to boot on ibm series x3500. Only 3.0.3 from debian etch boots and
works. I''ve tried it on another server and the problem is the same. 

the last thing that works it the grub menu. when I select the xen hypervisor
option, grub prints that it boots the selected menu, and the screen becomes
black with cursor blinking in the upper left corner. the machine freezes and
it takes a hard reset to get it to boot again.

however, trying it on a normal desktop hardware, any hypervisor I tried booted
all right. 

could anyone point me into any direction that has anything to do with this
problem?

thanks
martin

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Martin Kraus <lists_mk@wujiman.net> writes:
> the last thing that works it the grub menu. when I select the xen
hypervisor
> option, grub prints that it boots the selected menu, and the screen becomes
> black with cursor blinking in the upper left corner. the machine freezes
and
> it takes a hard reset to get it to boot again.
The only time I''ve seen this is when I screwed up the console config
(like the Xen kernel thinks it should be using serial rather than vga or 
vis-a-vis)  

Look at the console (or on the kernel line, com1=) options in the grub
config and compare them to the one that works.    If the grub config
is about the same, I would hook up a null modem and see if I could boot it
off the serial console (which is my preference anyhow)  

You could try forcing it to use a serial console (my preference anyhow) 

here''s what my grub snippit looks like:

title CentOS (2.6.18-53.1.21.el5xen)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /boot/xen.gz-2.6.18-53.1.21.el5 dom0_mem=512M com1=115200,8n1
        module /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-53.1.21.el5xen selinux=0 ro root=/dev/md0
console=ttyS0,115200n8
        module /boot/initrd-2.6.18-53.1.21.el5xen.img


Of course, that might not be it.   The grub config is still the first place
I''d look-  I''d make sure to remove any splash screens or
''quiet'' options.

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On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 08:52:58PM -0400, Luke S Crawford
wrote:
> Martin Kraus <lists_mk@wujiman.net> writes:
> > the last thing that works it the grub menu. when I select the xen
hypervisor
> > option, grub prints that it boots the selected menu, and the screen
becomes
> > black with cursor blinking in the upper left corner. the machine
freezes and
> > it takes a hard reset to get it to boot again.
> 
> The only time I''ve seen this is when I screwed up the console
config
> (like the Xen kernel thinks it should be using serial rather than vga or 
> vis-a-vis)  
> 
> Of course, that might not be it.   The grub config is still the first place
> I''d look-  I''d make sure to remove any splash screens or
''quiet'' options.
no, that''s not it. if it was, the virtual would boot even without
displaying
anything and i''d get there throught ssh. I''ve tried console
over serial (this
works with 3.0.3 hypervisor) and console on vga, both get stuck right after
xen hypervisor starts. 

I''ve tried the exactly same setup on a desktop hardware and it works
just
fine.

there must be something wrong with the hardware. if it was only that one
server, i''d forget about it and move to another one, but so far it does
this
on every hardware that has intel vt which i need. however, i''ve tried
to disable
that in the bios setup but it didn''t help. 

the weird thing is it gets stuck right after grub, without even producing any 
messages and it freezes the hardware solid. even keyboard numlock stops
responding.

martin

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