Xen On Etch

Here are some notes for those having some trouble trying to run the latest version of Xen (3.3.1 as of writing – Jan 2009) on Debian Etch – with Debian Etch DomUs. Many may find that their DomUs and their configs, that previously worked with the Debian Etch packaged Xen 3.0.3, now don’t work. I should add that to run the latest version of Xen on Debian Etch requires you to download the source tarball from the Xen website. Following the instructions in the source tar ball work with a few exceptions:

Note: I installed these Debian packages before the Xen compilation:

aptitude install build-essential mercurial gawk zlib1g-dev libx11-dev gettext libssl-dev libncurses5-dev python-dev texinfo bcc bin86

1. The domU xen console doesn’t work.

2. 3.0.3 domU config files don’t quite work.

The fixes are simple:

1. Ensure that inside each Debian Etch DomU you have the xvc0 (Xen console) and xvda (DomU disks) devices. If you don’t then use mknod:

mknod /dev/xvc0 c 204 191  mknod /dev/xvda b 202 0 mknod /dev/xvda1 b 202 1 mknod /dev/xvda2 b 202 2

.. and so on depending on how many disks you’re exporting to the DomU

Ensure /etc/inittab has the line:

0:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 xvc0

Add xvc0 to /etc/securetty

2. Example DomU config – note the kernel’s ‘extra’ stanza, the commented out ramdisk, and the xvda disks. The kernel should point to your newly compiled Xen kernel which will be different. Use your own disk devices, MAC address, and DomU name too!

 1.  -*- mode: python; -*- kernel = "/boot/vmlinuz-xen" extra = "console=xvc0 2" #ramdisk = "/boot/initrd.img-xen" memory = 256 name = "stats" vcpus = 2 vif = [['mac=00:16:3e:12:34:58',|'bridge=xenbr0']] disk = ['phy:vg-xen/stats-root,xvda1,w','phy:vg-xen/stats-swap,xvda2,w'] ip='192.168.0.2' netmask='255.255.255.0' gateway='192.168.0.254' hostname= "stats" root = "/dev/xvda1 ro"