[CentOS] virt-manager crashes Host during installation of guest

Thu Aug 20 13:31:41 UTC 2009
Kai Schaetzl <maillists at conactive.com>

Bernhard Gschaider wrote on Thu, 20 Aug 2009 01:47:07 +0200:

> - following the Wiki-Howto to the letter (especially using the
>    Xen-install-kernels)

Again, I think this is the wrong way to go, it's outdated. I've never done 
it this way and I think this How-To is derived from very old Xen versions 
and got updated a few times over time without changing the basics. It 
*may* work, but it's complicated to follow and overly complex, e.g. you 
can very easily make a tiny mistake and never get going which is highly 
frustrating.

As I wrote, just do a "virt-install -p" and that's all. No "install 
kernels", no creation of an image file, no nothing. virt-install will do 
everything for you. Once the VM has been setup and saved you can create a 
config-file and put it in /etc/xen and then "xm create" the machine.
Straight-forward and easy. The config-file is going to look like this:
name = "d-mini"
maxmem = 128
memory = 128
vcpus = 1
bootloader = "/usr/bin/pygrub"
on_poweroff = "destroy"
on_reboot = "restart"
on_crash = "restart"
#vfb = [ "type=vnc,vncdisplay=12,vncunused=1" ]
disk = [ "file:/home2/vm/d-minimal.img,xvda,w"]
vif = [ "mac=00:16:3e:43:18:13" ]

And if you prefer kickstart a (replace with your own data)

virt-install -p --location=ftp://.... --noautoconsole --nographics --
file=/.../d-minimal.img --file-size=1 --name=d-mini --ram=256 -x 
"ks=ftp://.../minimal-file.ks ip=192.168.1.* netmask=255.255.255.0 
dns=192.168.1.* gateway=192.168.1.*"

gets you in business in less than 10 minutes without any manual 
intervention.

Kai

-- 
Kai Schätzl, Berlin, Germany
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