[CentOS-virt] CentOS 6 VM image for paravirtualizaton on CentOS Xen server

Tue Mar 17 05:32:55 UTC 2015
Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel at gmail.com>

On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 4:02 AM, Manuel Wolfshant
<wolfy at nobugconsulting.ro> wrote:

> Quote from an actual installation:
>
> [root at xenh4 ~]# history| grep virt
> virt-install  -n dhcpdns -p -r 1024 --os-type=linux --vnc -f
> /var/lib/xen/images/dhcpdns -s 2 -l
> http://192.168.50.40/mrepo/centos6-i386/disc1 -x
> "ks=ftp://192.168.50.40/linux/ks-minimalC6-xen.cfg"
>
> [root at xenh4 ~]# uname -a
> Linux xenh4 2.6.18-400.1.1.el5xen #1 SMP Thu Dec 18 02:18:37 EST 2014 i686
> i686 i386 GNU/Linux
>
> https://github.com/CentOS/Community-Kickstarts/blob/master/ks-minimalC6.cfg
> is quite close to the above mentioned ks-minimalC6-xen.cfg ( actually both
> are descendants of the same template of mine )

Thanks!!!! The key, hinted at by various notes in this thread, was the
use of the "--location" to point to a network accessibleinstallation
repository. I'm afraid that the Xen wiki directions about "--location"
are a bit unclear about the need for this to be the base of a
deployment directory, one that *must* have a working subdirectory
called 'imagex/xen' with the relevant files in it. I admint, I have to
just love hardcoded, hidden requirements!!!

I'll point out for others who may need to image systems quickly that
it's often more effective, especially in terms of speed and external
bandwidth, to use an internal mirror as you did. I'll also point out
that it can be awfully handy to keep such a mirror up-to-date and use
it your local configurations. I publish such scripts at
https://github.com/nkadel/nkadel-rsync-scripts, in case anyone else
wants them.

I'll also mention my old habit in ks.cfg files of doing this, to hang
onto the actual ks.cfg instead of the confused and '%pre' and '%post'
stripped, anaconda reverse engineered oddness in
/root/anaconda-ks.cfg.

    %pre
     cp -f /tmp/ks.cfg /mnt/sysimage/root/ks.cfg
    %end