Hello everyone, I realize this question may be frequently asked. I’d like to assure you that I did as much research as I could myself before resorting to mailing this list ☺. I need to run Xen with a DomU guest OS being windows 7. My understanding is that I need Xen 4.0 in order to do this. I have a system to build exclusively for this purpose. My question for everyone is, what is the *easiest* choice of host OS for running Xen4.0. Here is what I have tried/researched. Open Suse 11.4: I’ve spent a couple of days trying this. I had to upgrade to Xen4.0, and that worked reasonably well. I had difficultly starting guest OSes due to a bug (resolved at http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/applications/463698-vm-install-error-none-opensuse-11-4-x86_64-a.html) After fixing that, I was able to install Win7 as a guest OS. I've been having a a difficult time with the networking setup. Looking at the xend-config.sxp file it seems that the network-bridge script doesn't work, and that bridges should be configured manually in YaST. I've been having a hard time with this, which is what prompted me to find an OS where things might work "out of the box" more. I've also found some threads with people having problems even after manual configuration of the network (http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/network-internet/455511-x64-xen-bridge-configured-but-no-br0-no-internet-connection.html). I will admit I don't fully know what I'm doing on the networking side here, so this is why I was hoping for a dom0 OS that would be easier to work with defaults. Fedora: This seems to work but nowhere near as seamless as OpenSuSE. Looks like you need to edit grub, etc.. (http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/Fedora13Xen4Tutorial?highlight=%284.0%29%7C%28Ubuntu%29%7C%28xen%29) Ubuntu: Similar to Fedora (http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2010/03/26/steps-to-try-xen-4-0-0-release-candidate-8-on-ubuntu-lucid-10-04-64-bits/) Xen cloud platform: I apologize if this is a really stupid question, but is this an OS? It seems that this would be perfect, except that it only supports Xen hypervisor 3.4.2. Is this something that can be easily upgraded? The XCP 1.1 beta page doesn't mention anything about hypervisor 4.0 This is the research I've done so far. I would greatly appreciate it if someone could point me to the OS that would be best suited to run windows7 as a guest OS. I'm not looking for anything fancy, just whatever OS would be the *easiest* to get a guest OS as win7 to work with networking. Thank you for your time, and thank you very much for any assistance! Julien _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 5:02 PM, Beasley, Julien <Julien.Beasley@amd.com>wrote:> Hello everyone, > > I realize this question may be frequently asked. I’d like to assure you > that I did as much research as I could myself before resorting to mailing > this list ☺. > > I need to run Xen with a DomU guest OS being windows 7. My understanding is > that I need Xen 4.0 in order to do this. I have a system to build > exclusively for this purpose. My question for everyone is, what is the > *easiest* choice of host OS for running Xen4.0. Here is what I have > tried/researched. >Why would you need Xen 4.0 to virtualize Windows 7? I don''t run Windows 7 but I don''t see a technical reason why you''d need a specific version of Xen. Grant McWilliams Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I''ll use Windows." Now they have two problems. _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
That’s a good question. I had understood that Xen 4.0 was needed to run windows 7, but now I can’t find any evidence supporting that claim. I will try either CentOS or XCP then. Julien From: Grant McWilliams [mailto:grantmasterflash@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2011 8:05 PM To: Beasley, Julien Cc: xen-users@lists.xensource.com Subject: Re: [Xen-users] Easiest OS to use for xen 4.0? On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 5:02 PM, Beasley, Julien <Julien.Beasley@amd.com> wrote: Hello everyone, I realize this question may be frequently asked. I’d like to assure you that I did as much research as I could myself before resorting to mailing this list ☺. I need to run Xen with a DomU guest OS being windows 7. My understanding is that I need Xen 4.0 in order to do this. I have a system to build exclusively for this purpose. My question for everyone is, what is the *easiest* choice of host OS for running Xen4.0. Here is what I have tried/researched. Why would you need Xen 4.0 to virtualize Windows 7? I don't run Windows 7 but I don't see a technical reason why you'd need a specific version of Xen. Grant McWilliams Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use Windows." Now they have two problems. _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
The reason I need Xen 4 specifically is that I need to use PCI-passthrough from graphics card with multiple GPUs -- from (http://wiki.xen.org/xenwiki/XenPCIpassthrough) If you want to manually override this in Xen 4.0.0 or newer you can specify "pci-passthrough-strict-check no" in /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp, and after restarting xend passthru code won't give this error anymore. In some (many?) cases PCI passthru can work after this change. So it seems this is only supported in Xen 4. So let me ask the question again, now that I understand my own requirements better :) What is the easiest OS to use for XEN 4 dom0? I've also been experimenting with XCP, which has worked great so far, but the problem I'm having is setting the PCI-passthrough from the snippet above. The configuration is different in XCP than in Xen, there's no xend-config.sxp to modify (at least not that I've found). So I'm okay with *either* a dom0 that supports Xen 4 (OpenSuSE was not good for this as the networking didn’t work out of the box), or a way to configure XCP to do PCI-passthrough as per the snippet above. Any thoughts? Thank you! Julien _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
I don''t know if this is applicable but generally what you can do with XenServer you can do with XCP. http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX125574 Not sure if this is what you need or not. If *I were wanting to run Xen 4.x on Linux I''d install CentOS, add the gitco repos and update it there. http://www.gitco.de/repo/ I don''t run Xen 4.0 but my tutorial on this process for Xen 3.4 on CentOS may help. I haven''t tried it for Xen4. The gitco repos do have Xen 4 though so you''ll need to change the tutorial slightly. http://grantmcwilliams.com/tech/virtualization/xen-howtos/487-install-xen-34-on-centos5-64bit-the-easy-way- Grant McWilliams On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 12:35 PM, Beasley, Julien <Julien.Beasley@amd.com>wrote:> The reason I need Xen 4 specifically is that I need to use PCI-passthrough > from graphics card with multiple GPUs -- from ( > http://wiki.xen.org/xenwiki/XenPCIpassthrough) > > If you want to manually override this in Xen 4.0.0 or newer you can > specify "pci-passthrough-strict-check no" in /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp, and > after restarting xend passthru code won''t give this error anymore. In some > (many?) cases PCI passthru can work after this change. > > So it seems this is only supported in Xen 4. So let me ask the question > again, now that I understand my own requirements better :) > > What is the easiest OS to use for XEN 4 dom0? > > I''ve also been experimenting with XCP, which has worked great so far, but > the problem I''m having is setting the PCI-passthrough from the snippet > above. The configuration is different in XCP than in Xen, there''s no > xend-config.sxp to modify (at least not that I''ve found). So I''m okay with > *either* a dom0 that supports Xen 4 (OpenSuSE was not good for this as the > networking didn’t work out of the box), or a way to configure XCP to do > PCI-passthrough as per the snippet above. > > Any thoughts? > > Thank you! > > Julien > > > _______________________________________________ > Xen-users mailing list > Xen-users@lists.xensource.com > http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users >_______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users