Brook Milligan <br...@nmsu.edu> writes: > Does anyone know of a source of Linux images that can be booted as DomU with > Xen? Or how to make one using NetBSD? > > Thanks. > > Brook
It will depend on how you ultimately want to run the DOMU, but the simplest way is to get pretty much ANY iso or other bootable image from any distro and boot it as a DOMU full HVM guest. If you are using one of the Linux distros that have a GUI or text installer then you can just proceed with that as you might on bare metal. If you are doing one of the more manual distros like ArchLinux then just follow the instructions they provide on their web site. If this is good enough for the use case, you can stop there (i.e. HVM guests hit the DOM0 harder and probably will have higher latency in a number of places). However, Linux will run as a full PVH guest too. To convert a HVM guest to a PVH guest you copy the vmlinuz and initramfs image files from (usually) /boot in the HVM guest into the DOM0. You then modify the config file for the guest to be a lot like a PV guest, point the kernel= to the vmlinuz and ramdisk= to the initramfs file. You then say 'type="pvh"' instead of 'builder="hvm"' and you should be pretty much good. (Maybe remove any ioemu stuff from the vif). This is a ArchLinux config using HVM: kernel = "/usr/pkg/lib/xen/boot/hvmloader" builder='hvm' device_model_version="qemu-xen-traditional" memory = 2048 cpu_weight = 64 name = "archlinux" vif = [ 'bridge=bridge4, type=ioemu' ] disk = [ 'phy:/dev/mapper/rustvg0-archlinuxlv0,ioemu:hda,w' ] boot='c' vfb = [ 'type=vnc,vnclisten=10.1.2.1' ] This is the same guest in PVH mode: kernel = "/lhome/xen/kernels/ArchLinux/6.1.1.arch1-1/vmlinuz-linux" ramdisk = "/lhome/xen/kernels/ArchLinux/6.1.1.arch1-1/initramfs-linux.img" type="pvh" memory = 2048 cpu_weight = 64 name = "archlinux" vif = [ 'bridge=bridge4' ] disk = [ 'phy:/dev/mapper/rustvg0-archlinuxlv0,xvda,w' ] root = "/dev/xvda1" extra = "mitigations=off console=hvc0 rdshell" (Please note that this uses exactly the same disk images... it was installed as a HVM and converted to a PVH guest. A traditional PV guest may also be possible depending on what Linux kernel version you have if you drop the "type" directive. I believe support for those was removed, however.....) At the very least, I have done this with ArchLinux, CentOS, Ubuntu and Slackware (a long time ago). I always look for the isos and just boot that to start with... Any live image will also likely work as a full HVM guest if that suites the purpose. -- Brad Spencer - b...@anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org
