I started experimenting with xen this evening, and I''m rather frustrated already. None of the documentation seems to correlate or match up with any other documentation. We are currently PXE booting and kickstarting bare metal systems, and that is working fine. In order to maintain the same deployment procedure to bare metal and virtual machines I would like to do the same with xen guests. However, it seems like pvm guests don''t support network booting and hvm guests don''t support the virtual console. I''ve seen documentation that says you have to add console output to your kernel boot arguments... but what sort of serial console is that? Is it a real serial console or a virtualised one??? The Xen FAQ (http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenFaq) says that you an add console access by adding a new entry to xinetd... didn''t seem to work though. Am I even looking the right thing here? Is this talking about the virtual console that connects me to a guest, or something else? A lot of people seem to be using vnc to connect to their guests (again, because hvm guests don''t support the serial console). Why? I mean, if your going to go use a graphic UI to manage the guests, you might as well just go use vmware. Hell will freeze over before I use a graphic UI to manage by servers, bare metal or virtual. Heck, OpenVZ is completely command line driven and it''s ''console'' command works just fine. Grrrrr. Doug _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 2:14 PM, Douglas Garstang <doug.garstang@gmail.com> wrote:> I started experimenting with xen this evening, and I''m rather > frustrated already. > > None of the documentation seems to correlate or match up with any > other documentation.It does, doesn''t it? We could really use volunteers who''s willing to manage documentation properly. xen wiki is a good start, but it''s not complete. yet.> We are currently PXE booting and kickstarting > bare metal systems, and that is working fine. In order to maintain the > same deployment procedure to bare metal and virtual machines I would > like to do the same with xen guests. However, it seems like pvm guests > don''t support network bootingIt does. Sort of. See http://www.grid.ie/pypxeboot/ and http://zhigang.org/files/docbook/xen-pxeboot.html> and hvm guests don''t support the virtual > console.If you mean the console you connect to using "xm console", hvm console can support it just fine. It''s treated as a serial port if you have this entry on domU config file : serial=''pty''> I''ve seen documentation that says you have to add console > output to your kernel boot arguments... but what sort of serial > console is that? Is it a real serial console or a virtualised one???I assume you''re talking about HVM domUs? The setup process on domU side is similar as setting up real machines to use serial port as output. This is what I used on HVM opensuse domU''s grub.conf: #===============================================serial --unit=0 --speed=9600 terminal --timeout=5 serial console title openSUSE 11.1 - 2.6.27.29-0.1 root (hd0,1) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.29-0.1-default root=LABEL=ROOT resume=LABEL=SWAP splash=silent showopts console=tty1 console=ttyS0 initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.29-0.1-default #=============================================== I''m not sure whether the "console=tty1" part is correct, but at least the serial console works fine, and I can access it from dom0 using "xm console". And don''t forget to edit /etc/inittab (or equivalent) to spawn login screen on ttyS0 or console.> > The Xen FAQ (http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenFaq) says that you > an add console access by adding a new entry to xinetd... didn''t seem > to work though. Am I even looking the right thing here?sort of.> Is this > talking about the virtual console that connects me to a guest, or > something else?That part is talking about how you can connect to a tcp port on dom0 and have dom0 run "xm console", sending its output via network. I assume that''s not what you want though, and that you only want "xm console" to work for HVM domU. In this case you need to setup the OS inside domU to use first serial port as its console.> > A lot of people seem to be using vnc to connect to their guests > (again, because hvm guests don''t support the serial console). Why?... because some people are stuck with Windows domUs.> I > mean, if your going to go use a graphic UI to manage the guests, you > might as well just go use vmware.IMHO it''s mostly a matter of choice. I dumped vmware server several years ago as it''s I/O performance sucks. It might perform better now, plus ESXi is available for free, but I''m much more comfortable with Xen on servers nowadays, and virtualbox on desktop.> Hell will freeze over before I use a > graphic UI to manage by servers, bare metal or virtual. Heck, OpenVZ > is completely command line driven and it''s ''console'' command works > just fine.Use whatever fits your need best. Xen PV guest should be somewhat similar (in console behavior) to OpenVZ. -- Fajar _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
On Tue, Apr 06, 2010 at 04:05:22PM +0700, Fajar A. Nugraha wrote:> > If you mean the console you connect to using "xm console", hvm console > can support it just fine. It''s treated as a serial port if you have > this entry on domU config file : > > serial=''pty'' > > > I''ve seen documentation that says you have to add console > > output to your kernel boot arguments... but what sort of serial > > console is that? Is it a real serial console or a virtualised one??? > > I assume you''re talking about HVM domUs? The setup process on domU > side is similar as setting up real machines to use serial port as > output. This is what I used on HVM opensuse domU''s grub.conf: > > #===============================================> serial --unit=0 --speed=9600 > terminal --timeout=5 serial console > > title openSUSE 11.1 - 2.6.27.29-0.1 > root (hd0,1) > kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.29-0.1-default root=LABEL=ROOT > resume=LABEL=SWAP splash=silent showopts console=tty1 console=ttyS0 > initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.29-0.1-default > #===============================================> > I''m not sure whether the "console=tty1" part is correct, but at least > the serial console works fine, and I can access it from dom0 using "xm > console". And don''t forget to edit /etc/inittab (or equivalent) to > spawn login screen on ttyS0 or console. >I just added an entry about this to: http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenCommonProblems -- Pasi _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
cc-ing the list as well On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 11:35 PM, Douglas Garstang <doug.garstang@gmail.com> wrote:> On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 2:05 AM, Fajar A. Nugraha <fajar@fajar.net> wrote:>> If you mean the console you connect to using "xm console", hvm console >> can support it just fine. It''s treated as a serial port if you have >> this entry on domU config file : > > Yes, but that''s not really good enough for a PXE boot and kickstart > install. I can pass the extra console parameters to the kernel on boot > to send output to the serial port (and back into xm console), but what > about before that? How do I see what the PXE boot process is doing? > There''s a lot of stuff that goes on before the kernel starts up.So from this point we''re being specific about HVM domUs, right? Xen HVM domUs uses lots of Qemu components. Redirecting all "vga" output to serial port requires BIOS support. Something like http://code.google.com/p/sgabios/ would be needed, though I''m not aware of any ready-to-use implementation for Xen yet.> > Also, in a kickstart install that goes to a VGA console, you have your > multiple virtual consoles (ie pressing alt-f1, alt-f2 etc). A lot of > extra debug goes to these screens so that if something fails during > the process, you have an idea of what went wrong. If the install is > done via a serial port, you have none of these. Even vmware lets the > Linux VM have it''s normal virtual consoles. Why can''t xen have that? > This seems like a major draw back to me.are you referring to accessing vmware guests via VMware Virtual Machine Console? That''s pretty much what Xen does already using vnc/SDL GUI. If you want Vmware-like functionality where you can see guests''s VGA output immediately when a guest starts, you might want to try using virt-manager. -- Fajar _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users