[CentOS-virt] xen setup documentation for centos?

[George Dunlap]

On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 3:12 AM, lee <lee at yun.yagibdah.de> wrote:
> George Dunlap <dunlapg at umich.edu> writes:
>
>> On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 1:45 AM, lee <lee at yun.yagibdah.de> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> what is the proposed way to create domU guests on centos 6.5?  At first
>>> I tried to follow the documentation on the xen project website which
>>> recommends using xl.  I created a config file and ended up with getting
>>> a message that the kernel is not bootable when trying to create a guest.
>>> I also had to stop some daemon (xend?) because it said that xl isn`t
>>> compatible with it and the daemon must be stopped first.
>>
>> I understand how frustrating it can be to be dealing with old /
>> inaccurate documentation.  But I'm not sure how we're supposed to help
>> you if you don't give any details about what you did and exactly how
>> it failed.
>
> I was merely trying to create a VM on a centos host, using xen.  Hence
> my question what "the centos way" of doing this (without a GUI) is.
>
> By trial and error, I found that creating them with virsh-install works.
> Yet it seems to me as if virsh is an additional layer which makes
> dealing with VMs a lot easier at the cost of increased resource usage.
> My intention was to avoid this and to create VMs "the xen way" --- which
> apparently doesn`t work with centos.

The Xen project itself doesn't have anything to build disk images;
just as KVM itself doesn't have anything to build disk images.  It
leaves that to higher-level tools.

I know some people use virsh to install the guest, and then use the xl
command-line to manage it after that; but I haven't tested that.

It would be good to have recommendations on the wiki for a simple,
standardized way to create guests in CentOS.

>> If you describe which bit of documentation on the Xen website you
>> tried to follow, what you were trying to do, and what happened, then
>> we can figure out which of those it is and address the issue.
>
> Well, I didn`t really care about the documentation that didn`t work.
> Like I said, using xl didn`t work because it only says the kernel can`t
> be booted; xm seems to be deprecated (yet still used with centos), and
> virsh-install works.

*I* care about the documentation that didn't work, so that other
people don't trip over the same thing.  :-)  If you've walked this
path and become frustrated, there are probably a dozen other people
who have also walked it and just not said anything.

Thanks,
 -George