[CentOS] Installing a new VM on a xen box. (Intel DQ35JO MB)

[James B. Byrne]

On Thu, October 9, 2008 15:51, James B. Byrne wrote:
> I decided to come at this from a different angle and acquired a
> "Centrina???" Intel white-box 64 bit Core2 Duo system with Intel VT
> technology.  This should give me "full virtualization" capability for Xen.
>
> However, while the installer of the ix_64 package completes without
> problem (si long as the acpi=off switch is provided) I get an error when
> system first boots after the install followed by a halt
>
> I see this message:
>
> BIOS BUG No explicit IRQ entires. Using default mptable (tell hw vendor)
>

The magical incantations to get this system to work were:

1.  Discover that the MB is an Intel DQ35JO series.
2.  Discover that the BIOS in a newly built system is 18 months out of date.
3.  Get the most recent BIOS update from Intel.com as an ISO image.
4.  Create a bootable CD-ROM from the BIOS ISO image.
5.  Ensure that the BIOS drive settings emulate IDE (otherwise the CD-ROM
is invisible to the system on the boot CD).
6.  Boot from CD, wait until instructed and remove the CD (referred to as
a floppy by the software), reboot and watch the system flash its BIOS.
7.  Reset customized settings in the updated BIOS and select desired SATA
drive type (AHCI in my case).
8.  Install CentOS-5.2 using the command: linux pci=nommconf (per RH KBase)
9.  Zoom, we're off and running.

Now, I have a test system that fully supports Intel VT technology and
full-virtualization under Xen.  However, having crossed that bridge I am
now looking at whether KVM is where I should expend my limited time if, as
it seems, that is where CentOS is heading.

Opinions?

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James B. Byrne                mailto:ByrneJB at Harte-Lyne.ca
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