Maintaining Xen with FAI - Questions

[Michael Tautschnig]

> Hello,
> 
> I've got several Questions about using FAI to install a Xen virtual  
> Domain.
> 
> - First of all, what did you use to make custom kernels? I tried to  
> use make-kpkg for generating xen dom0 and domU kernels, for the dom0  
> kernel it works fine, I am using the xen hypervisor provided by the  
> debian repository, that works ok together with homemade Dom0 linux- 
> kernel.
> Please correct me if I already have done something stupid at this time.
> 
I'm using a custom built xen kernel as well, because Debian kernels for xen
lack pae support :-(

> - If I install the whole xen-system by apt-getting it, i can start a  
> FAI Installation with the initrd provided by the deb package and the  
> xenu kernel i generated by myself, of course i have to install my  
> domu kernel over the xen system installation, also not very clean,  
> but i dont know how to build a .deb-package out of the xen-utils or  
> the hypervisor when i compile it from source.  But if i try to use  
> ONLY my domu kernel it doesnt start. XEND.log says "domain has  
> crashed".  Building deb-pkgs from xen-source seems pretty advanced to  
> me, because there are several make targets, dom0, domu and xen-utils  
> with hypervisor,so how did you guys manage this?
> 
Why don't you use the packages provided by Debian? Here we've got:

root at wasp:~# dpkg -l | grep xen
ii  libc6-xen                              2.3.6.ds1-7                     GNU C Library: Shared libraries [Xen version
ii  linux-xen0-2.6.18-686xenbigmem         F.1                             Linux xen kernel binary image for version 2.
ii  xen-hypervisor-3.0-unstable-1-i386-pae 3.0-unstable+hg11561-1          The Xen Hypervisor on i386-pae-class
ii  xen-utils-3.0-unstable-1               3.0-unstable+hg11561-1          XEN administrative tools
ii  xen-utils-common                       3.0.3-0-1                       XEN administrative tools - common files

(System is entirely from Debian/etch)

> - Is there any essential support I have to setup in my domu kernel to  
> get FAI to start running without an initrd?? I've checked there is  
> already NFS support built into my domU-kernel. But what else do i  
> need to be ready to use fai with xen?
> 
Network, disk, NFS should be about it...

> - Do you use seperate kernels for dom0 and domU? the debian pkg from  
> official server installs one kernel for both. What are the advantages  
> of using just one for both purposes?
>
The same kernel everywhere... The advantage of using one for both should be
obvious: It takes a lot more time to build and maintain two variants of your
kernel. And I don't know about any disadvantages...

Best,
Michael


 
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