Great - thanks for the info! 

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jan Mark Holzer
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2007 7:40 PM
To: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (Tikanga) discussion mailing-list
Subject: Re: [rhelv5-list] Xen - determining paravirtual vs. fully
virtual?

Collins, Kevin [MindWorks] wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>         can anyone tell me how to determine (in Xen) whether a guest 
> OS was installed as paravirtual vs. fully virtual? Is that something 
> that can be changed without a re-install assuming the OS, RHEL5 in 
> this case, supports it? I've looked in the config files for the 
> various systems and I can't tell...
>
> Thanks,
>
> Keivn
>
>
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>   
Hi,

    one of the easier options to figure out if you are running in a 
para-virt vs fully-virt/HVM guest
    is to use either check the kernel name and/or the output "dmidecode"

(there are other examples
    as well but lets keep it easy first :) ) .
    At least in RHEL/Fedora the kernel used in dom0 and a para-virt 
guest has always
    the extension 'xen' (ie RHEL5 GA is 2.6.18-8.el5xen) , the kernel in

a fully-virt/HVM
    guest will have the same name as the bare metal kernel (ie 
2.6.18-8.el5 for RHEL5 GA if
    it is running as a fully-virt guest).
    In a HVM/fully-virt guest you could also use dmidecode and check the

Vendor/Product
    fields which should come up as "Xen" (Vendor) and "HVM domU"
(Product) .

    You can find a simple script at 
http://et.redhat.com/~jmh/virt-tools/scripts/ called
    xen-type.sh which can be used to figure out in which type guest 
and/or bare metal
    you are running .

    If you want to conver a fully-virt guest into a para-virt guest 
you'd have to
    install the para-virt kernel for the OS , make sure the entry for 
the para-virt
    kernel is the default boot target in your guest's /etc/grub.conf and

edit /etc/modprobe.conf to
    add the following lines to it

    alias eth0 xennet
    alias scsi_hostadapter xenblk

    you also want to remove the lines referencing to eth0 and the 
physical ethernet
    card and the scsi_hostadapter if present and change it to point to 
xenblk

    The next step would be to edit the guest config file on your 
dom0/HyperVisor
    of the HVM guest and change the entries for vif, disk and remove the
    entry "type=ioemu" from them.
    You also may want to change the 'disk' entry and change 
file:/PathToYourGuestImage
    to tap:aio:/PathToYourGuestImage and the device name from hda (hvm) 
to xvda (pv)
    Next you want to uncomment/remove the entries for "builder" , 
"kernel" and "device_model"
    Now add a line for "bootloader="/usr/bin/pygrub"

    This should be it and you should be able to boot your guest again .
    Now you can configure the network inside the guest and you should be

ready to go .

    I am not sure if it's documented in my notes on RHEL5/Virt at
    http://et.redhat.com/~jmh/docs/Installing_RHEL5_Virt.pdf but I will
    add a section to the document if it's not already included .

Hth,

    Jan

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