[CentOS-virt] Domain0 with Kernel 2.6.18-92.1.22.el5xen fails to boot Guests with Kernel 2.6.18-164.el5xen

Sun Sep 27 16:57:56 UTC 2009
Christopher G. Stach II <cgs at ldsys.net>

----- "Devraj Mukherjee" <devraj at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I am in a bit of a fix here, I have several Guests paravirtualized
> running on a Dom0 that is currently running the 2.6.18-92.1.22.el5xen
> Kernel. All my guests (administered by different people) have
> subsequently been updated to later versions of the kernel (namely
> 2.6.18-164.el5xen or 2.6.18-128.4.1.el5xen).
[...]
> I restarted a Guest that's now trying to boot with the
> 2.6.18-164.el5xen Kernel and it spits out messages like
> XENBUS: Waiting for devices to initialise: 295s...290s...
> 
> and eventually reboots.

IIRC, there were changes to the block back-/frontend drivers a while back, but that probably wouldn't do this. I would first look to make sure that your dom0 Xen daemons are in good condition. Occasionally, they will die or stop working. Watching the logs when you start your guest may give you some clues as to what dom0 may be hanging on. Restarting xend and/or xenconsoled (typically when your guest can't get a console or when ``xm console'' mysteriously doesn't work) may help. Anyway, you should update your dom0 kernel. That's pretty old. :)

-- 
Christopher G. Stach II