you might want to start with a list of packages that groupinstall will get and the yum install wont get, then work back from there. at the very least you are going to need libvirt and things it needs to run.

If you post a package diff list, we can pick through there perhaps ?

-- Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/ : 2522219@icq

Karanbir, I did attempt to see what's different, but the problem is the groupinstall appears to want to install X as well so I am lost to know what is really needed.

Further testing allowed me to get a one machine to work after a bare install with simply a #yum install xen so I am obviously now wrong in my assessment. At this point I believe it to be a simple problem in the CentOS/RH package of Xen (Or Xen itself) as I did try a Fedora Core 8 install and the same behavior was now noted: Some machines function before and after, and some don't function after!

My Linux experience is far too new to allow me to troubleshoot through it, but considering the magnitude of machines I have tried I am shocked if this behavior is not exhibited with other people.

Thanks, jlc

That just sounds like random testing, if you dont have the specifics on what you consider to be a minimal install along with package lists, you are not going to get anything that is reproduce able as a means to get Xen working with minimal install.

Easy killer, I am documenting what I choose to install versus not, it's hardly random. Two installs done one with my stuff checked and a #yum install xen (noted what was added) and another done without making any changes to the default install, then running #yum install xen (noted what was installed, it was the same) produced different results.

All you are trying to do, my guess is, work out what is the minimal packageset required to get a functional Xen based virt setup in your environment.

-- Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/ : 2522219@icq

Exactly, I don't want sendmail and VoIP clients etc. I am assuming if I choose to manage all the guests manually I don't need a gui.

Thanks, jlc

post a rpmlist diff. we can then take it from there

Karanbir, I appreciate the help, but you have to bear with me as I have to figure how to do that. I'll post back once I have that figured out!

Appreciate the help, jlc

rpm -qa

will tell you what all is installed on the machine at the moment, or 'yum list installed'

Just figured that out! I will re-install my way and then without modifying anything and run this command before and after installing Xen.

also, w.r.t your other question on the centos list, xen in centos-5.1 is already xen-3.1

I have only been using CentOS 5.1 and it wants to install Xen 3.0.3. Does 3.1 maybe exist in a different repo? I haven't enabled any other repo's.

Thanks! jlc

now might be a good time to work out how the CentOS and the entire EL setups work and how backports and security fix's are done. There is plenty of info out there to look at starting from the wiki to the redhat website.

-- Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/ : 2522219@icq

Thanks for the recommended reading, good info. I see that Xen 3.0.3 is now 3.1 actually (Backporting is obviously a good thing but at the risk of confusing things...). I see an errata listed as "network-bridge fails on some machines" which is my issue, I earlier had thought it was an installation issue but I ended up having Xen work in my preferred setup config on a different machine, so my dependency assumption was clearly wrong. The bug was last updated on 2007-11-07, but using yum to install Xen as I always have been does fetch me the versions of the rpm's that this bug report list: xen-3.0.3-41.el5.i386.rpm.

Obviously I don't know for sure if this is my issue but when I run the Xen script to stop the bridged network, the server regains network connectivity so I will venture to say it appears related or very similar to me:)

Thanks for all the advice on this matter Karanbir, jlc