Xen users - Oct 2008 - problems with opensuse 11 running xen on a Sun X4150

Hello

I am running opensuse 11 on a Sun x4150 32GB RAM 2 quad x86_64 E5450''s.
It has a SAS PCI-Express LSI 3081E Host Bus Adapter (a rebranded Adaptec
RAID 5805 it seems) running in a RAID 5 config.

Xen in this setup is 3.2.1. The kernel is 2.6.25.18

The problem I have is that when I try to run a the xen kernel the
RAID device is not found . I get messages on the console of "can''t
find /dev/disk/by-id/<name of raid-device>partno. Do you want to fall
back to ......"

There are no issues running a non-xen kernel.
There are no issues with the 32 bit version of the OS +xen on the same
hardware
I have checked the initrd and the module list is identical to those
loaded by the non-xen kernel.
I have remade the xen initrd (with and without the -A )
I have tried with acpi=off

Circumstantial evidence at least points to the aacraid module being
broken in this configuration. I would run the  32 bit OS, but need the
full 32Gb of RAM available.

Has anyone else come across this issue ?

I have read that a possible solution is to run the x86_64 hypervisor,
but boot a 32 bit  dom0, but have failed to get this working. What I
tried was simply copying the 64-bit hypervisor kernel (from the x86_64
install) to the 32 bit install of the OS, and then used grub to boot
that instead of the 32-bit hypervisor. The rest of the grub config
stayed exactly the same. The kernel and  xen  versions are nominally
identical (as produced by the opensuse people) . Is this approach
hopelessly naive? Anyway it does not work as the the boot stalls. The
hypervisor loads and the dom0 starts to load , but hangs at the point

"Write protecting the kernel read-only data"

Can anyone provide me with any clues, either on the aacraid issue or on
getting a 32-bit dom0 to boot from a 64-bit hypervisor? I am reluctant
to chuck away 16GB of ram.

Thanks

Bob


-- 
Bob Cregan
Unix Systems Administrator 1 Riverside Court
Lower Bristol Road
Bath
BA2 3DZ

Tel: +44 845 0346734
Mobile: 07712388129 


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