On Thu, May 05, 2011 at 04:53:22PM -0400, Martes G Wigglesworth wrote: > > On 05/05/2011 09:09 AM, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote: > > It sounds like your hardware does not have HVM support, > > which means you can only run PV VMs. > Thanks for the reply. > > You are correct. > > I have two P4 32-bit machines that I just picked up and wanted to use > them for testing until I can afford to upgrade to the 12-core > MB/Processors that I bought these 2u chassis into which I plan to install. > > I have never used xen, and it just seems kind of odd that you cannot > simply install from the hard drive, like on virtualbox. Anyhow, I could > only figure that was the outlying factor. > > I could not locate that aspect of the virt-manager docs, so I will check > again. > Not being able to install from ISO image as PV VM is a virt-manager limitation. (and partly centos/rhel distro limitation). > Anyhow, now I am fighting with SL-Linux's installation media for i386, > having the ability to be seen, and booted, but inside their own boot > menue, it forces you to re-verify that you have install media. (Even > though it is running from the media in the first place. Then Xen > magically can't see the iso that SL linux is running from.) > > Are there any good (I guess dated, now that everything is mulit-core) > docs on how to work with paravirtualization, since I have to deal with > this weird "network" install setup? It seems that I can put in the > explicit path to the local-disk-installed ISO image, but the second it > boots, nothing can be found, and it asks me to put in a url, etc... > RHEL/CentOS docs have examples... http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Virtualization/index.html cmdline virt-install example to install PV RHEL5/CentOS5: http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Virtualization/chap-Virtualization-Guest_operating_system_installation_procedures.html#sect-Virtualization-Installing_Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux_5_as_a_para_virtualized_guest Fedora can be installed as Xen PV VM in the same way.. just give fedora mirror URL instead of RHEL/CentOS mirror URL. > > I know this sounds incoherent, but I am burnt out from exams. > > Installation for PV (paravirtualized) VMs is only supported > > by using netinstall in virt-manager. > > > > HVM (fully virtualized) VMs can be installed from ISO image. > Thanks for the input, and would appreciate any further direction on > reading further on "real-world" installs, not the docs where they assume > you have a quad 12-core processor super server so "everything thing just > works in virtualmode... ) I guess this is more for virt-manager, but I > think you will understand what I mean if you check the doc site for virt > manager. They don't even mention that there is a limitation such as > what you have described, except to say "there is a limitation." > > Sorry for the ramble. Need more RedBull, or maybe not so much???? Lol.. > Hehe. You can also use other tools than virt-manager/virt-install to install VMs. - debootstrap to install Debian/Ubuntu VMs. - thirdparty "xen-tools" to install Debian/Ubuntu VMs. - febootstrap to install fedora. - various chroot tricks to install rpm-based distros. - Fedora native installer, by downloading the fedora installer pxeboot kernel + initrd and booting them as xen pv domU. - Debian/Ubuntu native installer, by downloading the debian 6.0 or ubuntu 10.04 installer netinstall kernel + initrd and booting them as xen pv domU. See the end of the tutorial for an example how to install ubuntu manually using the distro installer: http://wiki.xen.org/xenwiki/Fedora13Xen4Tutorial -- Pasi