Monday, May 16, 2011

Ubuntu 11.04 on Citrix XenServer 5.5, Part 5

This is part 5 (and final!) of a series on installing Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) on Citrix XenServer 5.5 in paravirtualization (PV) mode. [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4]

The last issue to resolve is detecting the hard drive at boot time. My recommendation is to install the kernel for virtual installations:

# apt-get install linux-image-virtual

IMPORTANT:  Because XenServer 5.5 is not compatible with grub 2, you will need to update the path to the kernel and initrd images of the VM (by modifying the PV-boot-loader-args parameter as shown in Part 4) for every kernel upgrade.  Verify the paths in /boot/grub/grub.cfg and update before rebooting the VM.

Another option is to add the xen block device driver to initrd:

# echo xen-blkfront >> /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
# update-initramfs -u

Your installation should be complete and booting without intervention.... now go have fun!

Posted by at 9:52 AM

10 comments:

  1. Nice series! Just what I needed; I installed my first xenserver 5.5 a week ago and I was looking for exactly this. Thanks! But there's one problem, being used to compiling my kernel by my self I don't have a clue how to add missing modules (ie reiserfs) to the virtual "edition" of Ubuntu's kernel. Any ideas?

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  2. Hi Urban,

    You can add other modules during boot up the same way xen-blkfront was added:

    echo reiserfs >> /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
    update-initramfs -u

    ReplyDelete

  3. Ah, but I later last evening found a bug report regarding reiserfs not being included in the virtual kernel package. So, it won't work.

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  4. Interesting. I'd probably stick to using the stock kernel and use option 2 to include xen-blkfront at boot-up.

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  5. Had problem after upgrading VM to natty on xenserver 5.6 fp1. During boot, VM showed something like "/init: line 244 ... 0x44d2fb7c-47ee-4b27-9f68-aeb0d9d6c62d ...". where 44d2fb7c-47ee-4b27-9f68-aeb0d9d6c62d was /dev/xvda1 UUID. next, init crashes /kernel panic.

    It started to work after
    xe vm-param-set uuid=$VMUUID PV-args="root=/dev/xvda1 ro console=hvc0 splash quiet vt.handoff=7

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  6. Thanks Justin... good to know!

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  7. Maybe needless to say but you should just do:

    ln -s /boot/vmlinuz-xxxxxxx /boot/vmlinuz
    ln -s /boot/initrd.img-xxxxx /boot/initrd.img

    And specify in de PV params --kernel=vmlinuz --ramdisk=initrd.img

    That way you only need to update the symlinks, and not the Xen configs, which takes considerably less time ;)

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  8. Aren't those symlinks maintained automatically when new kernels are installed?

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  9. Just remove grub2 and install grub. From my notes:

    ===============================
    First of all we have to remove grub-pc and install grub, so Xen’s pygrub loader can understand how to boot our system:
    sudo apt-get purge grub-pc grub-common
    sudo rm -rf /boot/grub/*
    sudo apt-get install grub
    sudo update-grub
    Then change indomU=detect to indomU=false in your /boot/grub/menu.lst and type:
    sudo update-grub
    sudo grub-install /dev/sda

    =============================

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  10. Hello, i have one problem...
    i choose reiserfs too... but i dont use :

    "echo reiserfs >> /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
    update-initramfs -u"

    i can put from :
    "xe-edit-bootloader -n LinuxTemplate2 -p3 -f /etc/initramfs-tools/modules"
    but cant update-initramfs -u ... have other way to do that?

    ty and nice tutorial

    ReplyDelete

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