Re: [CentOS-virt] very low performance of Xen guests

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 6/15/20 5:40 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:



On Mon, 15 Jun 2020 at 09:42, Manuel Wolfshant 
mailto:wo...@nobugconsulting.ro>> wrote:


On 6/15/20 2:46 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:

I got inspired by Adi's earlier suggestion and after reading
https://access.redhat.com/articles/3311301 I've tried today all
variants of disabling the spectre mitigations. Whatever I do,
immediately after a reboot, yum reinstall kernel does not take
less than 5 minutes :( It goes down to 2 min if I repeat the
operation afterwards so I guess some caching kicks in. I will try
later today the kernels from elrepo and maybe even xen.crc.id.au
<http://xen.crc.id.au> ( I kind of hate the "disable selinux"
recommendation from the install page so I postponed it in the hope
of other solution ).



If you can do a full reinstall, could you see if a KVM host/guest 
combo has the same problem? That would at least point the finger more 
firmly at VT, spectre or something else.





I finally managed to install a fresh KVM host / guest pair on an 
identical blade ( HS21XM, 64 GB ram, 2*E5450@ 3.00GHz ). Here are the 
results I see:



1. KVM host, stock instalation and fully updated, kernel 3.10.0-1127.10.1
#cd /sys/kernel/debug/x86/
#cat ibrs_enabled pti_enabled retp_enabled
0
1
1

#time yum -y reinstall kernel-3.10.0-1127.el7.x86_64
real    0m50.026s
user    0m32.872s
sys 0m23.312s


2. KVM guest on the same machine (virt-install --name guest1-rhel7 
--memory 2048 --vcpus 2  --disk size=20 --network=bridge:br0 --pxe 
--os-variant rhel7 <=== copy/paste from 
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/virtualization_deployment_and_administration_guide/sect-guest_virtual_machine_installation_overview-creating_guests_with_virt_install 
), stock installation and fully updated with absolutely no change 
towards the defaults including same ibrs_enabled pti_enabled 
retp_enabled as the host, , kernel 3.10.0-1127.10.1



#time yum -y reinstall kernel-3.10.0-1127.el7.x86_64
real    2m39.644s
user    1m54.662s
sys 1m32.496s


3. Xen Domu,  3.10.0-1127.8.2.el7.x86_6 ( but results are consistent 
across all kernels )


# cat ibrs_enabled pti_enabled retp_enabled
0
0
0

# time yum -y reinstall kernel-3.10.0-1127.el7.x86_64
real    5m44.030s
user    2m9.931s
sys 4m7.771s


4. Dom0, 4.9.215-36.el7.x86_64, , xen 4.12 from centos' repo

# time  yum -y reinstall kernel-3.10.0-1127.el7.x86_64
real    1m52.417s
user    0m45.704s
sys 1m32.167s

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Re: [CentOS-virt] very low performance of Xen guests

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 6/15/20 2:46 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:



On Sun, 14 Jun 2020 at 14:49, Manuel Wolfshant 
mailto:wo...@nobugconsulting.ro>> wrote:


Hello


    For the past months I've been testing upgrading my Xen hosts
to CentOS 7 and I face an issue for which I need your help to solve.

    The testing machines are IBM blades, model H21 and H21XM.
Initial tests were performed on the H21 with 16 GB RAM; during the
last 6=7 weeks I've been using the H21XM with 64 GB. In all cases
the guests were fully updated CentOS 7 -- initially 7.6 ( most
recent at the time of the initial tests ), and respectively 7.8
for the tests performed during the last 2 months.  As host I used
initially CentOS 6 with latest kernel available in the centos virt
repo at the time of the tests and CentOS 7 with the latest kernel
as well. As xen versions I tested 4.8 and 4.12 ( xl info included
below ). The storage for the last tests is a Crucial MX500 but
results were similar when using traditional HDD.

    My problem, in short, is that the guests are extremely slow.
For instance , in the most recent tests, a yum install kernel
takes cca 1 min on the host and 12-15 (!!!) minutes in the guest,
all time being spent in dracut regenerating the initramfs images.
I've done rough tests with the storage  ( via dd if=/dev/zero
of=a_test_file size bs=10M count=1000 ) and the speed was
comparable between the hosts and the guests. The version of the
kernel in use inside the guest also did not seem to make any
difference . OTOH, sysbench (
https://github.com/akopytov/sysbench/ ) as well as p7zip benchmark
report for the guests a speed which is between 10% and 50% of the
host. Quite obviously, changing the elevator had no influence either.

    Here is the info which I think that should be relevant for the
software versions in use. Feel free to ask for any additional info.


Is there a way to boot up a PV guest versus an HVM?


If I understood the docs correctly, newer xen does only PVHVM ( 
xen_platform_pci=1 activates that ) and HVM. But they say it's better 
than PV. And I did verify, PVHVM is indeed enabled and active





I could not find a H21XM but found an HS21XM on the iBM


My bad. The blades are indeed HS21 (Type 8853) and HS21 XM (Type 7995). 
The XM blades have 2*Xeon E5450@3GHz / 12GB L1 cache processors. The 
options I can fiddle with are https://imgur.com/a/DonXe5P


AFAICS the setttings are reasonable but please do let me know if there 
is anything there that should not be as it is



site and that seemed to be a 4 core 8 thread cpu which looks 'old' 
enough that the Spectre/etc fixes to improve performance after the 
initial hit were not done. (Basically I was told that if the CPU was 
older than 2012, just turn off hyperthreading altogether to try and 
get back some performance.. but don't expect much).


I can live with that. My problem is that DomU are much much slower that 
Dom0 so it seems xen virtualization affects ( heavily ) the performance.



As such I would also try turning off HT on the CPU to see if that 
improves anything.


I got inspired by Adi's earlier suggestion and after reading 
https://access.redhat.com/articles/3311301 I've tried today all variants 
of disabling the spectre mitigations. Whatever I do, immediately after a 
reboot, yum reinstall kernel does not take less than 5 minutes :( It 
goes down to 2 min if I repeat the operation afterwards so I guess some 
caching kicks in. I will try later today the kernels from elrepo and 
maybe even xen.crc.id.au ( I kind of hate the "disable selinux" 
recommendation from the install page so I postponed it in the hope of 
other solution ).


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[CentOS-virt] very low performance of Xen guests

[Manuel Wolfshant]

Hello


    For the past months I've been testing upgrading my Xen hosts to 
CentOS 7 and I face an issue for which I need your help to solve.


    The testing machines are IBM blades, model H21 and H21XM. Initial 
tests were performed on the H21 with 16 GB RAM; during the last 6=7 
weeks I've been using the H21XM with 64 GB. In all cases the guests were 
fully updated CentOS 7 -- initially 7.6 ( most recent at the time of the 
initial tests ), and respectively 7.8 for the tests performed during the 
last 2 months.  As host I used initially CentOS 6 with latest kernel 
available in the centos virt repo at the time of the tests and CentOS 7 
with the latest kernel as well. As xen versions I tested 4.8 and 4.12 ( 
xl info included below ). The storage for the last tests is a Crucial 
MX500 but results were similar when using traditional HDD.


    My problem, in short, is that the guests are extremely slow. For 
instance , in the most recent tests, a yum install kernel takes cca 1 
min on the host and 12-15 (!!!) minutes in the guest, all time being 
spent in dracut regenerating the initramfs images. I've done rough tests 
with the storage  ( via dd if=/dev/zero of=a_test_file size bs=10M 
count=1000 ) and the speed was comparable between the hosts and the 
guests. The version of the kernel in use inside the guest also did not 
seem to make any difference . OTOH, sysbench ( 
https://github.com/akopytov/sysbench/ ) as well as p7zip benchmark 
report for the guests a speed which is between 10% and 50% of the host. 
Quite obviously, changing the elevator had no influence either.


    Here is the info which I think that should be relevant for the 
software versions in use. Feel free to ask for any additional info.



 [root@t7 ~]# xl info
host   : t7
release    : 4.9.215-36.el7.x86_64
version    : #1 SMP Mon Mar 2 11:42:52 UTC 2020
machine    : x86_64
nr_cpus    : 8
max_cpu_id : 7
nr_nodes   : 1
cores_per_socket   : 4
threads_per_core   : 1
cpu_mhz    : 3000.122
hw_caps    : 
bfebfbff:000ce3bd:20100800:0001::::

virt_caps  : pv hvm
total_memory   : 57343
free_memory    : 53620
sharing_freed_memory   : 0
sharing_used_memory    : 0
outstanding_claims : 0
free_cpus  : 0
xen_major  : 4
xen_minor  : 12
xen_extra  : .2.39.g3536f8dc
xen_version    : 4.12.2.39.g3536f8dc
xen_caps   : xen-3.0-x86_64 xen-3.0-x86_32p hvm-3.0-x86_32 
hvm-3.0-x86_32p hvm-3.0-x86_64

xen_scheduler  : credit2
xen_pagesize   : 4096
platform_params    : virt_start=0x8000
xen_changeset  :
xen_commandline    : placeholder dom0_mem=1024M,max:1024M cpuinfo 
com1=115200,8n1 console=com1,tty loglvl=all guest_loglvl=all ucode=-1

cc_compiler    : gcc (GCC) 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-39)
cc_compile_by  : mockbuild
cc_compile_domain  : centos.org
cc_compile_date    : Tue Apr 14 14:22:04 UTC 2020
build_id   : 24148a191438467f26a9e16089205544a428f661
xend_config_format : 4


[root@t5 ~]# xl info
host   : t5
release    : 4.9.215-36.el6.x86_64
version    : #1 SMP Mon Mar 2 10:30:40 UTC 2020
machine    : x86_64
nr_cpus    : 8
max_cpu_id : 7
nr_nodes   : 1
cores_per_socket   : 4
threads_per_core   : 1
cpu_mhz    : 2000
hw_caps    : 
b7ebfbff:0004e33d:20100800:0001::::

virt_caps  : hvm
total_memory   : 12287
free_memory    : 6955
sharing_freed_memory   : 0
sharing_used_memory    : 0
outstanding_claims : 0
free_cpus  : 0
xen_major  : 4
xen_minor  : 8
xen_extra  : .5.86.g8db85532
xen_version    : 4.8.5.86.g8db85532
xen_caps   : xen-3.0-x86_64 xen-3.0-x86_32p hvm-3.0-x86_32 
hvm-3.0-x86_32p hvm-3.0-x86_64

xen_scheduler  : credit
xen_pagesize   : 4096
platform_params    : virt_start=0x8000
xen_changeset  :
xen_commandline    : dom0_mem=1024M,max:1024M cpuinfo 
com1=115200,8n1 console=com1,tty loglvl=all guest_loglvl=all

cc_compiler    : gcc (GCC) 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-23)
cc_compile_by  : mockbuild
cc_compile_domain  : centos.org
cc_compile_date    : Thu Dec 12 14:34:48 UTC 2019
build_id   : da34ae5b90c82137dcbc466cd66322381bc6fd21
xend_config_format : 4

/Note:/ with all other kernels and xen versions that were published for 
C6 during the last year,  the performance was the same, i.e. slow



The test VM is exactly the same, copied among servers:

[root@t7 ~]# cat  /etc/xen/test7_1
builder = "hvm"
xen_platform_pci=1
name = "Test7"
memory = 2048
maxmem = 4096
vcpus = 2
vif = [ 

Re: [CentOS-virt] [QEMU-KVM] Centos guest VM freezing

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 1/9/19 11:50 AM, Akshar Kanak wrote:

Hi
Thanks for the reply

We have seen the same guest VM freezing on vmware ESXi machine also ,


No wonder given that the guest remains 5 years out of date even when 
using a different hypervisor. Leaving aside that also the long-term 
kernel installed from ElRepo that you are using is also more then 4 
years out of date.


Please update the OS(es) to the current supported OS versions ( that is, 
7.6 / 6.10 ) and verify if the problems persist. But you've already been 
told that by several persons...



so we were interested in know in the internal condition of the guest 
vm when the freeze happened

How can we analyse the core file generated by "virsh dump "


http://bfy.tw/LhMS might help with that


Regards,

    manuel





Thanks and regards
Akshar

On Wed, Jan 9, 2019 at 1:58 PM Manuel Wolfshant 
mailto:wo...@nobugconsulting.ro>> wrote:


On 1/9/19 10:24 AM, Akshar Kanak wrote:

Dear team
    I am running a centos guest VM  which freezes for every few
days . The qemu-kvm on  shows 100% cpu utilization.
    Ping to the guest might work or may not work .Please can you
tell me what approach can i take to debug it .
    using "virsh dump" I can dump the core of the  guest vm but I
am not sure how to analyse it .
    Guest Centos VM : "Linux GUESTCentOS70
3.10.0-123.4.4.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Jul 25 05:07:12 UTC 2014
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux"
"CentOS Linux release 7.0.1406 (Core)"
1 vcpu and 2 GB ram
Host machine : "Linux HOST 3.10.51-1.el6.elrepo.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri
Aug 1 13:14:11 EDT 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux"
"CentOS release 6.5 (Final)"
qemu-kvm package used : qemu-kvm-0.12.1.2-2.415.el6_5.10.x86_64
Thanks and regards
Akshar


I'd say that you should start by updating the OS on both host and
guest. Both OSes are heavily outdated, you lack YEARS of updates.



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Re: [CentOS-virt] [QEMU-KVM] Centos guest VM freezing

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 1/9/19 10:24 AM, Akshar Kanak wrote:

Dear team
    I am running a centos guest VM  which freezes for every few days . 
The qemu-kvm on  shows 100% cpu utilization.
    Ping to the guest might work or may not work .Please can you tell 
me what approach can i take to debug it .
    using "virsh dump" I can dump the core of the  guest vm but I am 
not sure how to analyse it .
    Guest Centos VM : "Linux GUESTCentOS70 3.10.0-123.4.4.el7.x86_64 
#1 SMP Fri Jul 25 05:07:12 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux"

  "CentOS Linux release 7.0.1406 (Core)"
  1 vcpu and 2 GB ram
Host machine : "Linux HOST 3.10.51-1.el6.elrepo.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Aug 
1 13:14:11 EDT 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux"

"CentOS release 6.5 (Final)"
qemu-kvm package used : qemu-kvm-0.12.1.2-2.415.el6_5.10.x86_64
Thanks and regards
Akshar


I'd say that you should start by updating the OS on both host and guest. 
Both OSes are heavily outdated, you lack YEARS of updates.



    Regards


    Manuel

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Re: [CentOS-virt] CentOS 6 Virt SIG Xen 4.6 packages available in centos-virt-xen-testing

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 01/14/2016 06:57 PM, George Dunlap wrote:

As mentioned yesterday, Xen 4.6 packages are now available for
testing.  These also include an update to libvirt 1.3.0, in line with
what's available for CentOS 7.  Please test, particularly the upgrade
if you can, and report any problems here.

To upgrade:

yum update --enablerepo=centos-virt-xen-testing

To install from scratch:

* Install centos-release-xen from centos-extras

yum install centos-release-xen

* Update to get the new kernel:

yum update

* Install the Xen packages from the centos-virt-xen-testing repo:

yum install --enablerepo=centos-virt-xen-testing xen

Keep in mind that there is still a bug in the upstream CentOS
new-kernel script which for some people consistently fails to add an
"initird" line to the Xen boot stanza.  Check /boot/grub/grub.conf;
the Xen stanza should look something like this:

title CentOS (3.18.21-17.el6.x86_64)
 root (hd0,0)
 kernel /xen.gz dom0_mem=1024M,max:1024M cpuinfo com1=115200,8n1
console=com1,tty loglvl=all guest_loglvl=all
 module /vmlinuz-3.18.21-17.el6.x86_64 ro
root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root rd_NO_LUKS LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rd_NO_MD
rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_swap SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 crashkernel=auto
rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_root  KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rd_NO_DM rhgb
quiet
 module /initramfs-3.18.21-17.el6.x86_64.img


  -George
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Hello

I've attempted to upgrade today to xen 4.6 ( because of something 
which seems to be a reincarnation of 
http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2014-01/msg02259.html ) and 
I noticed that the new xen-runtime package tries to bring in a whole 
bunch of other packages:



Installing for dependencies:
 atk x86_64 1.30.0-1.el6 base 195 k
 avahi-libs x86_64 0.6.25-15.el6 base 55 k
 cairo x86_64 1.8.8-6.el6_6 base 309 k
 cups-libs x86_64 1:1.4.2-72.el6 base 321 k
 fontconfig x86_64 2.8.0-5.el6 base 186 k
 freetype x86_64 2.3.11-15.el6_6.1 base 361 k
 gdk-pixbuf2 x86_64 2.24.1-6.el6_7 updates 501 k
 gtk2 x86_64 2.24.23-6.el6 base 3.2 M
 hicolor-icon-theme noarch 0.11-1.1.el6 base 40 k
 jasper-libs x86_64 1.900.1-16.el6_6.3 base 137 k
 libXcomposite x86_64 0.4.3-4.el6 base 20 k
 libXcursor x86_64 1.1.14-2.1.el6 base 28 k
 libXft x86_64 2.3.1-2.el6 base 55 k
 libXi x86_64 1.7.2-2.2.el6 base 37 k
 libXinerama x86_64 1.1.3-2.1.el6 base 13 k
 libXrandr x86_64 1.4.1-2.1.el6 base 23 k
 libXrender x86_64 0.9.8-2.1.el6 base 24 k
 libthai x86_64 0.1.12-3.el6 base 183 k
 libtiff x86_64 3.9.4-10.el6_5 base 343 k
 pango x86_64 1.28.1-10.el6 base 351 k


Is this really needed ?

wolfy
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Re: [CentOS-virt] CentOS 6 Xen package update (including XSA-156)

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 11/18/2015 02:08 PM, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:

Hello,

On Sun, Nov 15, 2015 at 06:42:18PM +0200, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:

On Sun, Nov 15, 2015 at 02:04:58PM +0200, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:

On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 02:00:27PM +, George Dunlap wrote:

So going forward, we're moving the CentOS 6 Xen packages from the
custom "xen4" repos that were introduced several years ago, to repos
based on its position as a sub-project of the Virt Sig.  That will
make things consistent between all the sigs, as well as between CentOS
6 and 7 Xen packages.

Unfortunately, XSA-156 came up rather suddenly and is a bit blocked by
this transition.

So please help us test the new repository structure, so that we can
with conscience push the updates to xen4 users in general.


Seems to work for me!



Except now on another system I see this problem:


Anyone else seeing this libvirt-python problem with virt-manager and/or 
virt-viewer ?

(happens on a freshly installed system, so no earlier libvirt rpms installed)

It tries to install half of the OS, but it works for me.  It seems that 
your yum does not like that you already have 
libvirt-client-1.2.15-3.el6.x86_64. Mine is happy to bring in 
libvirt-{python,client}-0.10.2-54.el6_7.2.x86_64 from updates


wolfy



# yum install virt-manager
..
..
..

--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: Package: libvirt-python-0.10.2-54.el6_7.2.x86_64 (updates)
Requires: libvirt.so.0(LIBVIRT_PRIVATE_0.10.2)(64bit)
Available: libvirt-client-0.10.2-54.el6.x86_64 (base)
libvirt.so.0(LIBVIRT_PRIVATE_0.10.2)(64bit)
Available: libvirt-client-0.10.2-54.el6_7.2.x86_64 (updates)
libvirt.so.0(LIBVIRT_PRIVATE_0.10.2)(64bit)
Installed: libvirt-client-1.2.15-3.el6.x86_64 (@centos-virt-xen)
Not found
  You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
  You could try running: rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest


Are we missing a build of libvirt-python 1.2.15 package?



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Re: [CentOS-virt] CentOS 6 Xen package update (including XSA-156)

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 11/12/2015 04:44 PM, George Dunlap wrote:
Do you have the centos-extras repo enabled? The key in question is in 
the centos-release-virt-common package, which is in the centos-extras repo


I've just updated, so far so good.
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Re: [CentOS-virt] CentOS 6 Xen package update (including XSA-156)

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 11/12/2015 04:00 PM, George Dunlap wrote:

To update to the new repository structure, install the
centos-release-xen package directly from the new repo:

  yum 
updatehttp://mirror.centos.org/centos/6/virt/x86_64/xen/centos-release-xen-7-11.el6.x86_64.rpm

This should replace the xen4 repositories with the new virt sig


[root@xenh4bis ~]# yum update -y 
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/6/virt/x86_64/xen/centos-release-xen-7-11.el6.x86_64.rpm

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, presto
Setting up Update Process
centos-release-xen-7-11.el6.x86_64.rpm | 6.0 kB 00:00
Examining 
/var/tmp/yum-root-DzSL_q/centos-release-xen-7-11.el6.x86_64.rpm: 
10:centos-release-xen-7-11.el6.x86_64
Marking /var/tmp/yum-root-DzSL_q/centos-release-xen-7-11.el6.x86_64.rpm 
as an update to 10:centos-release-xen-6-4.el6.centos.x86_64

Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * epel: fedora.mirrors.telekom.ro
base |  951 B 00:00
updates |  951 B 00:00
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package centos-release-xen.x86_64 10:6-4.el6.centos will be updated
---> Package centos-release-xen.x86_64 10:7-11.el6 will be an update
--> Processing Dependency: 
/etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-SIG-Virtualization for package: 
10:centos-release-xen-7-11.el6.x86_64
--> Processing Dependency: 
/etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-SIG-Virtualization for package: 
10:centos-release-xen-7-11.el6.x86_64

--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: Package: 10:centos-release-xen-7-11.el6.x86_64 
(/centos-release-xen-7-11.el6.x86_64)

   Requires: /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-SIG-Virtualization
 You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
 You could try running: rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest

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Re: [CentOS-virt] CentOS 6 Xen package update (including XSA-156)

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 12 noiembrie 2015 16:44:55 EET, George Dunlap  wrote:

>Do you have the centos-extras repo enabled?  The key in question is in
>the centos-release-virt-common package, which is in the centos-extras
>repo.
>
> -George
no, i normally keep everything but base,updates (and xen4centos on xen 
machines) disabled. I will retry later today.
Thanks

  wolfy

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Re: [CentOS-virt] CentOS 6 VM image for paravirtualizaton on CentOS Xen server

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 03/16/2015 08:58 AM, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:

On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 07:52:42PM -0700, Sarah Newman wrote:

I'd really prefer to work from 'virsh' than from hand-writing xl
configuration files.When I last did this sort of thing, I worked from
a PXE environment that I controlled and could reserve DHCP settings
based on MAC addresses, and tune PXE to boot from disk by default but
allow users to select a clean re-install of the operating system they
wanted.

virt-install with --location maybe? Never tried it but it looks like what you 
want.

http://linux.die.net/man/1/virt-install


Yeah you can use virt-install on CentOS 5 Xen host to install CentOS 6 PV domUs,
I do that often, an example for GUI installation:

virt-install -d -n vmname -r 1024 --vcpus=2 -f /dev/vg01/vmname_disk0 -b virbr0 --vnc -p 
-l http://ftp.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/centos.org/6.5/os/x86_64;

(you need to have virt-viewer installed, that'll be used to display the VNC GUI 
console).

-- Pasi


Quote from an actual installation:

[root@xenh4 ~]# history| grep virt
virt-install  -n dhcpdns -p -r 1024 --os-type=linux --vnc -f 
/var/lib/xen/images/dhcpdns -s 2 -l 
http://192.168.50.40/mrepo/centos6-i386/disc1 -x 
ks=ftp://192.168.50.40/linux/ks-minimalC6-xen.cfg;


[root@xenh4 ~]# uname -a
Linux xenh4 2.6.18-400.1.1.el5xen #1 SMP Thu Dec 18 02:18:37 EST 2014 
i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux


https://github.com/CentOS/Community-Kickstarts/blob/master/ks-minimalC6.cfg 
is quite close to the above mentioned ks-minimalC6-xen.cfg ( actually 
both are descendants of the same template of mine )


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Re: [CentOS-virt] Are xen and centos incompatible?

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 06/10/2014 05:44 AM, lee wrote:
[...] and xen just don't go along with each other. The server is all 
on debian now. 

The problem with incompetence is its inability to recognize itself.
-- Orrin Woodward 
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/249881.Orrin_Woodward, /L.I.F.E. 
Living Intentionally For Excellence 
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/16132299 /


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Re: [CentOS-virt] xen setup documentation for centos?

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 06/06/2014 06:23 AM, lee wrote:
 George Dunlap dunl...@umich.edu writes:

 *I* care about the documentation that didn't work, so that other
 people don't trip over the same thing.  :-)  If you've walked this
 path and become frustrated, there are probably a dozen other people
 who have also walked it and just not said anything.
 To give an example:

 https://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/5.1/Deployment_Guide/s1-networkscripts-static-routes.html


 [root@charon ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
 DEVICE=eth0
 BOOTPROTO=none
 DNS1=192.168.178.20
 IPADDR=192.168.1.1
 NETMASK=255.255.255.255
 NM_CONTROLLED=no
 ONBOOT=yes
 TYPE=Ethernet
 UUID=1b645d25-9f66-4335-ba0b-939cdd9f553f

 [root@charon ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/route-eth0
 192.168.178.0/24 via 192.168.1.1 eth0

syntax error.  you need a dev before eth0. which actually is useless 
to append anyway because the interface is already specified in the file name


 default 192.168.178.200 dev eth0
syntax error. you miss a via before the IP of the gateway


 [root@charon ~]# service network restart
 Shutting down interface eth0:  [  OK  ]
 Shutting down loopback interface:  [  OK  ]
 Bringing up loopback interface:  [  OK  ]
 Bringing up interface eth0:  Determining if ip address 192.168.1.1 is already 
 in use for device eth0...
 Error: either to is duplicate, or eth0 is a garbage.
explained by the syntax error from the first line in route-eth0


 Error: either to is duplicate, or 192.168.178.200 is a garbage.
explained by the syntax error from the second line in route-eth0

 [  OK  ]
 [root@charon ~]# route -n
 Kernel IP routing table
 Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric RefUse Iface
 [root@charon ~]#
explained by the fact that your route-eth0 file doesn't contain any 
correct line

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Re: [CentOS-virt] xen setup documentation for centos?

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 06/07/2014 03:03 AM, lee wrote:
 Manuel Wolfshant wo...@nobugconsulting.ro writes:
 [..]
 You're right, I overlooked the 'dev'.

 Why doesn't the error message simply say syntax error and perhaps even
 points out that dev might be missing?
Because the program ip is pretty cryptic, despite being way more 
powerful than most people know


 There is no 'to' in the
 configuration file anywhere, and saying that eth0 might be a garbage
 isn't helpful in any way.  This isn't any better than failing silently
 or just printing error.
Each line of the route-eth* file(s) is passed ad-literam to ip route 
commands so all error messages that you see come from ip. Examine 
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-routes for details. In your case, 
you should test the content of route-eth* by using: ip route add 
$EachLineOneByOne



 I would like to make a bug report about this so that the useless error
 message may be changed.  But what package should the report refer to?
You could file a RFE either against iproute which actually triggers the 
messages you've seen or against initscripts (ifup-routes is provided by 
it - you could ask for a better parser ).
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Re: [CentOS-virt] Xen and Centos 6.5

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 05/23/2014 12:09 AM, NightLightHosts Admin wrote:
 I used it and it works great.  From what I remember I have to check
 sometimes that the xen kernel is still default.
make sure /etc/sysconfig/kernel suits your needs
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Re: [CentOS-virt] Xen on CentOS 6.4

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 05/27/2013 12:10 AM, Robert Dinse wrote:
   What are the advantages / disadvantes of Xen / KVM?

I for one have several machines where I cannot use KVM because the 
processors do not have support for hardware virtualization. Hence using 
xen there.

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Re: [CentOS-virt] Package lists for Cloud images

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 10/15/2012 01:00 PM, Karanbir Singh wrote:
 Hi Guys,

 Hoping to publish some testing images today late evening ( UTC ) - the
 targets I hope to hit are :


[...]

 Also, whats the best way to publish these images in a way that they can
 go away once the test-phase is done ( and ideally we really need them to
 go away )
dev.centos.org ?
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Re: [CentOS-virt] Should I switch and if so what is the procedure

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 10/05/2011 06:06 PM, Rich wrote:
 How hard is it to switch from Xen to KVM?
http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6-Beta/html/Virtualization_Getting_Started_Guide/


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Re: [CentOS-virt] Suggestions to improve this minimal kickstart config for CentOS 6?

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 07/22/2011 07:01 PM, Kartik Subbarao wrote:
 On 07/21/2011 09:51 AM, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
 http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/KickStart
   
 Does anyone on this list have write access to that Wiki page? Since it's
 the #1 google search result for centos kickstart, it'd be ideal to
 have it linked from there.
 Enjoy.

 Thanks Manuel, I'm sure this will be of help to many folks!!

 One suggestion -- when I deployed the ks-minimalC6.cfg, there were still
 some -firmware packages that got installed and were not removed by the
 kickstart process. I noticed that you explicitly remove various firmware
 packages by name with the '-' notation. Another approach would be to
 remove them all programmatically in a %post section, like this:

 %post
 rpm -e $(rpm -qa | grep -i \\-firmware | grep -v kernel-firmware)

And by the way, the above can rewritten in a shorter form:
  rpm -e $( rpm -qa \*firmware | grep -v kernel)

rpm -qa will enumerate all packages but in fact you want only the 
firmware ones. So you run an useless grep to filter them when in fact 
rpm can do that for you in the first place.



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Re: [CentOS-virt] Suggestions to improve this minimal kickstart config for CentOS 6?

[Manuel Wolfshant]

As of ks file size: who cares ? You create it once and use it as
 many times as needed. An extra dozen or hundreds of bytes / couple of
 lines are not significant in this context
 That wasn't my point :-) I guess I could have said simpler rather than
 smaller to make my point clearer. The less stuff that has to be
 manually specified in the file, the less work needed from a maintenance
 point of view. Also, it's simpler from a conceptual standpoint to see
 what's happening.


Ah, I am sorry, I misunderstood you. Yes, you are absolutely correct:  
the smaller the number of directives in the file, the simpler to maintain.
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Re: [CentOS-virt] Suggestions to improve this minimal kickstart config for CentOS 6?

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 07/21/2011 01:43 PM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
 On 07/20/2011 01:50 PM, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
 On 07/20/2011 02:37 PM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
 Oh, I believe you I'm just puzzled why I need the package and you 
 don't.
 Can you post an rpm -qa|sort of the final Package list you have in 
 the
 installed System?

 Regards,
 Dennis

 Already done that in my first mail.
 http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-virt/attachments/20110720/c78c2c2d/attachment.txt
  



 Sorry, I only saw the kickstart file but didn't notice that there was 
 a package list attached as well.
 Anyway it seems I need the system-config-firewall-base package because 
 I create a live image that I boot directly. After doing a regular 
 install with the same kickstart I can login normally even without that 
 package. Still no clue though why that would make a difference or what 
 that particular package has to do with logins.

 Regards,
   Dennis
You are 100% correct. Today I added back the package to the list. I 
noticed that logins continue to work after the package is removed but 
not after reboot. Go figure. Especially as I see nothing obvious in a 
rpm -ql

I'll leave it in for now and revisit, time permitting.

 Manuel


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Re: [CentOS-virt] Suggestions to improve this minimal kickstart config for CentOS 6?

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 07/20/2011 04:48 PM, Kartik Subbarao wrote:
 On 07/19/2011 05:36 PM, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
 Try the attached ks. It installs around 180 packages. libselinux-utils
 is in because I find it mandatory to be able to modify the selinux
 configuration of an existing system.

 Thanks for the info. I created a VM with this config and it took up 
 about 512MB of disk space, which is higher than the kickstart file 
 that I posted (about 460MB).
you removed selinux and also used rpm -e --nodeps which I would never 
promote (even if I also use on occasions).
ditch from my list the packages which install firmware and you'll end up 
at roughly the same size as yours. anyway my target was never minimal 
space on disk (today even CFs and SSD are several times larger than what 
the ks installs ) but minimal number of packages while still maintaining 
out of the box all the proper functionality ( or at least my vision on 
it), including for servers with real storage behind them ( brocade, etc 
). and I emphasize again: including selinux tools.


 I'm running x86_64 so I'll probably see different sizes than your 
 system which appears to be i686.
my ks works on both, just adjust the repository used for install



 In any event, thanks for taking the time to post your kickstart file. 
 It helps me validate that what I have is reasonably minimal, that I'm 
 probably not missing any major sources of size reductions. 
welcome

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Re: [CentOS-virt] Suggestions to improve this minimal kickstart config for CentOS 6?

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 07/21/2011 02:36 AM, JDF. Franklin wrote:
 For what it's worth here are a few more tools that I include due to
 fairly minimal impact, but are assumed by many 3rd party scripts for
 example:

 rsync
 unzip
 wget

 And personally I like these for local setup though they add a big more space:
 ntp
 elinks
 lsof
 nmap
 denyhosts
 yum-utils
 autofs
 nfs-utils
 nss_db
 nss-pam-ldapd
 nss-tools
 openldap-clients
 pam_ldap
Thank you for your suggestions. I want to keep the minimal image really 
minimal so I am not going to add to it anything but hardware drivers. On 
the other hand, I will keep your list handy and adjust accordingly (if 
space allows ) the content of the Light Weight Server CD ( which is 
still under work)

For what is worth, my minimal kickstart is now available as ks-minimalC6 
at https://nazar.karan.org/cgit/bluecain/tree/

 manuel
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Re: [CentOS-virt] Suggestions to improve this minimal kickstart config for CentOS 6?

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 07/20/2011 12:15 AM, Kartik Subbarao wrote:

On 07/19/2011 12:36 PM, Kartik Subbarao wrote:

rpm -e $(rpm -qa |grep -i firmware)

This should be changed to:
rpm -e $(rpm -qa | grep -i firmware | grep -v kernel-firmware)

Since apparently kernel depends on kernel-firmware.
Try the attached ks.  It installs around 180 packages. libselinux-utils 
is in because I find it mandatory to be able to modify the selinux 
configuration of an existing system.


There are a few packages left which can be removed if you insist:
- the firmware packages if you do not use that specific hardware ( 
atmel, brocade, qlogic ).
- yum-presto if you prefer to always download full rpm packages instead 
of deltas

- which, acl, attr


install
text
reboot
#cdrom
url --url http://wolfy/centos/os/x86_64/
lang en_US.UTF-8
keyboard us
skipx
network --device eth0 --bootproto dhcp
rootpw --iscrypted  $PUTYOURENCRYPTEDPASSWORDHERE
firewall --enabled
selinux --enforcing
authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5
timezone Europe/Amsterdam
bootloader --location=mbr
# The following is the partition information you requested
# Note that any partitions you deleted are not expressed
# here so unless you clear all partitions first, this is
# not guaranteed to work
clearpart --all --initlabel
part /boot --fstype ext3 --size=250
part pv.2 --size=5000 --grow 
volgroup VolGroup00 --pesize=32768 pv.2
logvol / --fstype ext4 --name=LogVol00 --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=1024 --grow
logvol swap --fstype swap --name=LogVol01 --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=256 --grow 
--maxsize=512
repo --name=updates --baseurl=http://PATHTOAVALIDREPO

%packages --nobase --excludedocs
coreutils
yum
rpm
e2fsprogs
lvm2
grub
openssh-server
openssh-clients
dhclient
yum-presto
-atmel-firmware-1.3-7.el6.noarch
-b43-openfwwf-5.2-4.el6.noarch
-cronie-1.4.4-2.el6.i686
-cronie-anacron-1.4.4-2.el6.i686
-crontabs-1.10-32.1.el6.noarch
-ipw2100-firmware-1.3-11.el6.noarch
-ipw2200-firmware-3.1-4.el6.noarch
-ivtv-firmware-20080701-20.2.noarch
-iwl1000-firmware-128.50.3.1-1.1.el6.noarch
-iwl3945-firmware-15.32.2.9-4.el6.noarch
-iwl4965-firmware-228.61.2.24-2.1.el6.noarch
-iwl5000-firmware-8.24.2.12-3.el6.noarch
-iwl5150-firmware-8.24.2.2-1.el6.noarch
-iwl6000-firmware-9.176.4.1-2.el6.noarch
-iwl6050-firmware-9.201.4.1-2.el6.noarch
-libertas-usb8388-firmware-5.110.22.p23-3.1.el6.noarch
-xorg-x11-drv-ati-firmware
-mysql-libs-5.1.47-4.el6.i686
-postfix-2.6.6-2.el6.i686
-rt61pci-firmware-1.2-7.el6.noarch
-rt73usb-firmware-1.8-7.el6.noarch
-sudo-1.7.2p2-9.el6.i686
-sysstat-9.0.4-11.el6.i686
-yum-utils-1.1.26-11.el6.noarch
-zd1211-firmware-1.4-4.el6.noarch
-info
-system-config-firewall-base
%end
%post
%end
acl-2.2.49-4.el6.i686
aic94xx-firmware-30-2.el6.noarch
atmel-firmware-1.3-7.el6.noarch
attr-2.4.44-4.el6.i686
audit-2.0.4-1.el6.i686
audit-libs-2.0.4-1.el6.i686
authconfig-6.1.4-6.el6.i686
basesystem-10.0-4.el6.noarch
bash-4.1.2-3.el6.i686
bfa-firmware-2.1.2.1-2.el6.noarch
binutils-2.20.51.0.2-5.11.el6.i686
bzip2-1.0.5-6.1.el6.i686
bzip2-libs-1.0.5-6.1.el6.i686
ca-certificates-2010.63-3.el6.noarch
centos-release-6-0.el6.centos.2.i686
checkpolicy-2.0.22-1.el6.i686
chkconfig-1.3.47-1.el6.i686
coreutils-8.4-9.el6.i686
coreutils-libs-8.4-9.el6.i686
cpio-2.10-9.el6.i686
cracklib-2.8.16-2.el6.i686
cracklib-dicts-2.8.16-2.el6.i686
curl-7.19.7-16.el6.i686
cyrus-sasl-lib-2.1.23-8.el6.i686
dash-0.5.5.1-3.1.el6.i686
db4-4.7.25-16.el6.i686
db4-utils-4.7.25-16.el6.i686
dbus-glib-0.86-5.el6.i686
dbus-libs-1.2.24-3.el6.i686
device-mapper-1.02.53-8.el6.i686
device-mapper-event-1.02.53-8.el6.i686
device-mapper-event-libs-1.02.53-8.el6.i686
device-mapper-libs-1.02.53-8.el6.i686
dhclient-4.1.1-12.P1.el6.i686
diffutils-2.8.1-28.el6.i686
dracut-004-32.el6.noarch
dracut-kernel-004-32.el6.noarch
e2fsprogs-1.41.12-3.el6.i686
e2fsprogs-libs-1.41.12-3.el6.i686
efibootmgr-0.5.4-8.el6.i686
elfutils-libelf-0.148-1.el6.i686
ethtool-2.6.33-0.3.el6.i686
expat-2.0.1-9.1.el6.i686
file-libs-5.04-5.el6.i686
filesystem-2.4.30-2.1.el6.i686
findutils-4.4.2-6.el6.i686
fipscheck-1.2.0-4.1.el6.i686
fipscheck-lib-1.2.0-4.1.el6.i686
gamin-0.1.10-9.el6.i686
gawk-3.1.7-6.el6.i686
gdbm-1.8.0-36.el6.i686
glib2-2.22.5-5.el6.i686
glibc-2.12-1.7.el6.i686
glibc-common-2.12-1.7.el6.i686
gmp-4.3.1-7.el6.i686
gnupg2-2.0.14-4.el6.i686
gpgme-1.1.8-3.el6.i686
grep-2.6.3-2.el6.i686
grub-0.97-68.el6.i686
grubby-7.0.15-2.el6.i686
gzip-1.3.12-18.el6.i686
hwdata-0.233-1.el6.noarch
info-4.13a-8.el6.i686
initscripts-9.03.17-1.el6.centos.i686
iproute-2.6.32-10.el6.i686
iptables-1.4.7-3.el6.i686
iptables-ipv6-1.4.7-3.el6.i686
iputils-20071127-13.el6.i686
kbd-1.15-11.el6.i686
kbd-misc-1.15-11.el6.noarch
kernel-2.6.32-71.el6.i686
kernel-firmware-2.6.32-71.el6.noarch
keyutils-libs-1.4-1.el6.i686
krb5-libs-1.8.2-3.el6.i686
less-436-4.el6.i686
libacl-2.2.49-4.el6.i686
libattr-2.4.44-4.el6.i686
libblkid-2.17.2-6.el6.i686
libcap-2.16-5.2.el6.i686
libcap-ng-0.6.4-3.el6.i686
libcgroup-0.36.1-6.el6.i686
libcom_err-1.41.12-3.el6.i686
libcurl-7.19.7-16.el6.i686

Re: [CentOS-virt] New to virtualization - can't use more than one CD when installing a new VM

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 06/28/2011 02:07 AM, Steve Campbell wrote:

Why not use a DVD image in /var/lib/xen/images?


 Our company blocks bittorents due to abuse. I believe the DVD ISOs are now
 taking up two DVDs, so I'm not sure how I'd do this either. I'll research 
 this a
 little more as I'm aware I can download the ISOs from the Japanese mirrors.

the second ISO is not needed at install time. it contains only 
additional language support for OpenOffice

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Re: [CentOS-virt] Recommendations, please

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 06/23/2011 06:28 PM, Alain Péan wrote:
 Le 23/06/2011 17:16, R P Herrold a écrit :
 I did not say the CentOS project was ** going to ship **
 xen; I said:
  The sources that will become CentOS 6 ** will run **
  xen.org virtualization as a dom0, and KVM ** may be **
  excluded

 CentOS proper at the 6 level will ship KVM as that tracks the
 upstream, warts and all

 I must say that the meaning of your message is not clear for me. What is
 the difference for you between The sources that will become CentOS 6,
 and CentOS proper ? What do you have in mind ? Why KVM may be excluded ?
Without implying that I can read his mind, I guess he meant People with 
enough skills will be able to tweak C6 to use xen as Dom0

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Re: [CentOS-virt] Recommendations, please

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 06/23/2011 06:54 PM, Tom Bishop wrote:
 Russ if you have time can you elaborate more about why you are 
 continuing to go down the Xen path, I for one would love to hear the 
 why's and what for.  I can understand the hardware requirements, and I 
 know xen is generally going to be faster but my small requirements 
 have decided to start moving things to KVM since that is the direction 
 of the upstream...would welcome your opinions if you have time 
 available...Thanks in advance :)

I'll give you my reasons :
- existing infra, setup and knowledge
- RH gave up promoting xen because it was acquired by a competitor, not 
because it was not good ( or worse ) than kvm


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Re: [CentOS-virt] Where is my qemu command?

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 04/27/2011 02:31 PM, Kai Schaetzl wrote:
 I'm so glad we are still on Xen :-) Especially with para-virt CentOS
 running in all the VMs, anyway, it seems hardly to be beaten.
except that we lack a lot of the new goodies. starting with 
deduplication and proper balooning
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Re: [CentOS-virt] Extract ip address from a kvm guest

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 04/23/2011 09:27 PM, carlopmart wrote:

 Arpwatch is a correct solution when host and guests are in the same
 network, but in my environment, they are in different nets with a
 firewall in the middle...
I run arpwatch on the core router which sits between all VLANs

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Re: [CentOS-virt] Network frozen in Centos 5 with Xen

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 02/17/2011 10:31 AM, onlineque onlineque wrote:
 Hello,

 I have this problem - I have installation of Xen and Centos 5 (all RPMs are 
 from Centos repositories).
 I have several DomU virtual machines running on this machine.
 When I try to copy some bigger amount of data from another physical computer 
 to Dom0/DomU on this machine, the network freezes. The link is still up, I 
 can see that the connection really links on the switch, but nothing is 
 received or sent to the network. I tried to stop all the DomUs, stop the 
 network, unload the network drivers from memory and loading them again and 
 starting the network, but the problem persists. Only reboot solves the 
 problem.
 Sometimes the amount of data have to be around gigabytes (last time it was 
 10GB), sometimes 500MB is enough to stop the network...
 I also tried to change the NIC, but the behavior is the same.
 Btw. logs don't say anything :-/

 Any idea ? Thank you very much !

Replace the Realtek network card (preferably with an Intel ! ) if you 
are using it.
Try 
http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/driver-sla.php?driver=570x-Linux 
if using the BCM5705 interface. If this solves your problem, file a RFE 
in bugzlla.redhat.com because the current driver both in RHEL6 and in 
RHEL 5.6 is still based on version 1.108

 Manuel

 Vladimir


 PS: this is the output of my lspci:

 00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge
 00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge
 00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge
 00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge
 00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge
 00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge
 00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI bridge [K8T800/K8T890 
 South]
 00:05.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. 
 RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
 00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5705 Gigabit 
 Ethernet (rev 03)
 00:0f.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID 
 Controller (rev 80)
 00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. 
 VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
 00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82x UHCI USB 1.1 
 Controller (rev 81)
 00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82x UHCI USB 1.1 
 Controller (rev 81)
 00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82x UHCI USB 1.1 
 Controller (rev 81)
 00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82x UHCI USB 1.1 
 Controller (rev 81)
 00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
 00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge 
 [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
 00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. 
 VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] 
 HyperTransport Technology Configuration
 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] 
 Address Map
 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM 
 Controller
 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] 
 Miscellaneous Control
 00:19.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] 
 HyperTransport Technology Configuration
 00:19.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] 
 Address Map
 00:19.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM 
 Controller
 00:19.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] 
 Miscellaneous Control
 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV15 [GeForce2 GTS/Pro] 
 (rev a4)

 output of uname -a:

 Linux hydra 2.6.18-194.11.4.el5xen #1 SMP Tue Sep 21 05:40:24 EDT 2010 x86_64 
 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux


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-- 
  Manuel Wolfshant   linux registered user #131416
 IT managerNoBug Consulting SRL
   A: Yes.
   Q: Are you sure?
   A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
   Q: Why is top posting frowned upon?

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Re: [CentOS-virt] iTunes?

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 02/12/2011 11:56 PM, Lucas Timm LH wrote:
 Ealier was possible run iTunes in Linux using Wine. Actually I really 
 don't know if it still works, because a lot things have changed since 
 2007 (was the last time I'd installed iTunes in Linux). BTW you can 
 install VMware Workstation or Player to run Windows XP/Seven/Whattever 
 and do what you want. I guess VirtualBox OSE have no USB support, so 
 you will need to buy a licence to VirtualBox or VMware.
USB works OK in VirtualBox-4.0-4.0.2_69518_rhel6-1.x86_64



 I don't know if KVM supports USB too.

 2011/2/12 MargoAndTodd margoandt...@gmail.com 
 mailto:margoandt...@gmail.com

 Hi All,

 If you would please suffer a Fedora Code 13 question on a CentOS
 mailing
 list, I
 have a Linux customer with Fedora Code 13 who loves it but is
 about to dump
 it because he really, really wants iTunes. (He owns an iPod and an
 iPhone.)
 None of the Linux utilities quite work right and he wants to buy
 music from
 the iTunes store as well. Plus he wants to synchronize his
 contacts list.

 So, I was thinking of installing an XP VM on his computer. Would
 iTunes work
 properly?  Would you use KVM or Virtual Box? Any words of wisdom
 shared
 would be appreciated.

 Many thanks,
 -T
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 -- 
 Lucas Timm, Goiânia/GO.
 http://timmerman.wordpress.com

 (62) 8198-0867


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[CentOS-virt] working config for xen which would transfer a serial interface

[Manuel Wolfshant]

  Hello

 Can anyone share a known working config for xen which would 
transfer a serial interface ( add-on card preferably, mine uses   
e880-e887 : :03:05.0 /   ec00-ec07 : :03:05.0 ) to a DomU ?
 I've been trying with the stock packages from Centos 5.5 ( fully 
updated) and also with gitco's 3.4.3 but after 2 days of googling and 
testing we still fail to access the serial interface from DomU.
 No matter what we've tried,
- in DomU there is no reference to any kind of serial ports in 
/proc/{interrupts,ioports}
- the test program which accesses ttyS0 fails ( it works just fine in 
dom0) even after manually loading parport_serial in DomU

 /dev/ttyS{0..3} do get created by default, if that matters.



 Here is the content of the config file, after the last attempt 
(which uses gitco's xen, but we failed similarly with the stock packages):

name = testr
uuid = 57baf51a-e293-fa35-9f2e-056a1c0e322a
maxmem = 512
memory = 512
vcpus = 1
bootloader = /usr/bin/pygrub
on_poweroff = destroy
on_reboot = restart
on_crash = restart
vfb = [ type=vnc,vncunused=1,keymap=en-us ]
disk = [ tap:aio:/var/lib/xen/images/testr,xvda,w ]
vif = [ mac=00:16:36:0c:aa:1a,bridge=xenbr0,script=vif-bridge ]
irq = [11 ]
ioports = [ ec00-ec07,e080-e08f ] // we also tried to pass all the 
IO ports referenced in lspci -vvv

[r...@dom0]#lspci -vvv
03:05.0 Communication controller: NetMos Technology PCI 9835 Multi-I/O 
Controller (rev 01)
 Subsystem: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic 1P2S
 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- 
ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B-
 Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium 
 TAbort- TAbort- MAbort- SERR- PERR-
 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
 Region 0: I/O ports at ec00 [size=8]
 Region 1: I/O ports at e880 [size=8]
 Region 2: I/O ports at e800 [size=8]
 Region 3: I/O ports at e480 [size=8]
 Region 4: I/O ports at e400 [size=8]
 Region 5: I/O ports at e080 [size=16]

[r...@dom0 ~]# dmesg | grep ttyS

[r...@dom0 ~]# cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
#[...]
blacklist 8250
blacklist 8250_pnp
blacklist serial_core
blacklist parport_serial
blacklist 8250_pci



[r...@dom0 ~]# grep xen /etc/grub.conf
title CentOS (2.6.18-194.el5xen)
 kernel /xen.gz-3.4.3
 module /vmlinuz-2.6.18-194.el5xen ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
 module /initrd-2.6.18-194.el5xen.img
title CentOS (2.6.18-194.8.1.el5xen)
 kernel /xen.gz-3.4.3
 module /vmlinuz-2.6.18-194.8.1.el5xen ro 
root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 xencons=off
 module /initrd-2.6.18-194.8.1.el5xen.img

[r...@dom0 ~]# uname -a
Linux Dom0 3 2.6.18-194.8.1.el5xen #1 SMP Thu Jul 1 19:41:05 EDT 2010 
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

sniff from the boot messages in tge DomU:

XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/vbd/51712
XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/vif/0
XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/ioports/0
XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/ioports/1
XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/ioports/2
XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/ioports/3
XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/ioports/4
XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/ioports/5
XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/irq/0
XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/console/0




[r...@domu ~]# cat /proc/interrupts
CPU0
256:   7433 Dynamic-irq  timer0
257:  0 Dynamic-irq  resched0
258:  0 Dynamic-irq  callfunc0
259:554 Dynamic-irq  xenbus
260:705 Dynamic-irq  xencons
261:802 Dynamic-irq  xenfb
262:  0 Dynamic-irq  xenkbd
263:   6607 Dynamic-irq  blkif
264:   8959 Dynamic-irq  eth0
NMI:  0
LOC:  0
ERR:  0
MIS:  0

[r...@domu ~]# cat /proc/ioports
-001f : dma1
0020-0021 : pic1
0040-0043 : timer0
0050-0053 : timer1
0060-0060 : keyboard
0064-0064 : keyboard
0080-008f : dma page reg
00a0-00a1 : pic2
00c0-00df : dma2
00f0-00ff : fpu

[r...@domu ~]# lsmod
Module  Size  Used by
8250_pnp   43969  0
parport_serial 41153  0
8250_pci   56257  1 parport_serial
8250   86057  2 8250_pnp,8250_pci
serial_core56385  1 8250
[...]

[r...@domu ~]# uname -a
Linux DomU 2.6.18-194.8.1.el5xen #1 SMP Thu Jul 1 19:41:05 EDT 2010 
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux




 TIA

 manuel

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Re: [CentOS-virt] Slightly OT - Grub fallback option

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 05/18/2010 04:21 PM, Ben M. wrote:
 Does anyone have a standard install of CentOS virtualization grub.conf 
 working in a proven state with the FALLBACK option? If so, can you post 
 your grub.conf?

 I mistakenly updated to 5.5 and am concerned about nvidia driver 
 comments in the release notes. I did not have protectbase configured on 
 this machine. It is a remote device that will reboot.


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default=1
fallback=2
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
title CentOS (2.6.18-194.el5xen)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /xen.gz-2.6.18-194.el5 dom0_vcpus_pin
module /vmlinuz-2.6.18-194.el5xen ro root=/dev/md0 panic=45
module /initrd-2.6.18-194.el5xen.img
title CentOS (2.6.18-164.15.1.el5xen)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /xen.gz-2.6.18-164.15.1.el5 dom0_vcpus_pin
module /vmlinuz-2.6.18-164.15.1.el5xen ro root=/dev/md0 panic=45
module /initrd-2.6.18-164.15.1.el5xen.img
title CentOS (2.6.18-164.15.1.el5xen)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /xen.gz-2.6.18-164.15.1.el5 dom0_vcpus_pin
module /vmlinuz-2.6.18-164.15.1.el5xen ro root=/dev/md0 panic=45
module /initrd-2.6.18-164.15.1.el5xen.img



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Re: [CentOS-virt] Silly question about KVM

[Manuel Wolfshant]

Scot P. Floess wrote:
 I was wondering, if I do not have hardware that natively supports full 
 virtualization...and I choose to use KVM, 
You cannot use KVM on systems which do not support hardware virtualization


 will my VMs be running in some 
 form of chip emulation (and therefore terribly slow).  To date, I've been 
 using Xen and am very comfortable with it.  I have some fears that later 
 whenever Xen is dropped - I'll have to consider KVM.

 Also, will Xen be carried forward should Xen be dropped from RHEL?
   
xen will be included in RHEL 5 and hence in Centos 5 for the whole life 
of the distro.  However it might (actually I am pretty sure this will 
happen) no longer get enhancements after a given time (but only bugfixes)
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Re: [CentOS-virt] Best practices for LVM and virtualization

[Manuel Wolfshant]

Mathieu Baudier wrote:
 3. On both host and guest
   
 This is what I always use and recommend. It doesn't have any side effects 
 with modern software versions, except with layered
 

 Thanks!

 I have tried this, but I don't see how to grow the guest file system
 without restarting the guest:
 - if I grow the underlying logical volume on the host, the guest still
 see the hard drive with the old size (checking with fdisk)
 - if I would add additional logical volumes (host) / drives (guest) in
 order to add them to the guest volume group, I will have to restart
 the guest

 I am using virtio disks.

 Is there a command so that the guest notices that its harddrive has grown?
 Is there a way to add new drives without restarting the guest?
yes, you can add / remove disks to a VM without restarting the guest. 
look at the xm block-attach  / block-detach commands
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Re: [CentOS-virt] Best practices for LVM and virtualization

[Manuel Wolfshant]

Mathieu Baudier wrote:
 yes, you can add / remove disks to a VM without restarting the guest.
 look at the xm block-attach  / block-detach commands
 

 My understanding is that xm is Xen specific (I'm using Qemu/KVM)

 I tried with virsh:

 virsh # attach-disk 6 /dev/mapper/vg_alma_fast-lv_test_virtlvm2 vdb
 Disk attached successfully

 virsh # dumpxml 6
 domain type='kvm' id='6'
 ...
   devices
 emulator/usr/libexec/qemu-kvm/emulator
 ...
 disk type='block' device='disk'
   source dev='/dev/mapper/vg_alma_fast-lv_test_virtlvm'/
   target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/
 /disk
 disk type='block' device='disk'
   driver name='phy'/
   source dev='/dev/mapper/vg_alma_fast-lv_test_virtlvm2'/
   target dev='vdb' bus='virtio'/
 /disk
 ...
   /devices
 /domain

 But I still cannot see the disk using fdisk: there is no /dev/vdb.

   
You also need to tell the guest that a new device exists... Unless it 
(the guest) has some hotswap abilities
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Re: [CentOS-virt] Best practices for LVM and virtualization

[Manuel Wolfshant]

Mathieu Baudier wrote:
 You also need to tell the guest that a new device exists... Unless it
 (the guest) has some hotswap abilities
 

 Do you know how I can do that?
   
something along

  echo - - -  /sys/class/scsi_host/hostX/scan  // yes, the - 
must be there !

might help


 I reinstalled the guest (CentOS 5.4 x86_64, just as the host) with the
 default non-desktop groups, but it still doesn't see when I attach a
 disk.

 I also try to disable SELinux, to no effect.

 I've googling intensively around the concept of hotplug, hotswap, PCI,
 HAL, etc. in relation to virsh/KVM/virtio but withotu success.

 On the guest, lspci only shows on drive (the initial one I guess):

 [r...@localhost ~]# lspci
 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440FX - 82441FX PMC [Natoma] (rev 02)
 00:01.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82371SB PIIX3 ISA [Natoma/Triton II]
 00:01.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371SB PIIX3 IDE [Natoma/Triton II]
 00:01.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371SB PIIX3 USB
 [Natoma/Triton II] (rev 01)
 00:01.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 03)
 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Cirrus Logic GD 5446
 00:03.0 Ethernet controller: Qumranet, Inc. Virtio network device
 00:04.0 SCSI storage controller: Qumranet, Inc. Virtio block device
 00:05.0 RAM memory: Qumranet, Inc. Virtio memory balloon
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-- 
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IT managerNoBug Consulting SRL
  A: Yes.
  Q: Are you sure?
  A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
  Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? 

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Re: [CentOS-virt] Windows Xen VM's have high guest CPU usage and poor performance

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 01/25/2010 07:28 PM, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
 On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 09:03:58PM -0500, Ryan Pugatch wrote:
   
 Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:

 
 Also many people are running Windows 2003 VMs on Xen without problems.

 -- Pasi

   
 My patch management and antivirus console machine is a Xen virtualized  
 Windows 2008 machine that doesn't have problems.  I even moved an XP VM  
 over to the same server as that machine just to see what happens.  The  
 XP machine still performed poorly.

 

 Ok. The next thing to try would be to update to gitco Xen 3.4.2 rpms, 
 but I guess you switched to ESXi already :)
For what is worth, I had several problems with the gitco packages:
- in xen-3.3 .0 , Java starting to consume all the processing power ( 
the same VM with stock xen from Centos 5.2 was fine in this aspect; see 
my thread started at 
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-virt/2009-February/000836.html )
- with xen-3.4.1 and 3.4.2 from gitco, an XP HVM failed to start, 
despite working perfectly with stock Centos 5.4

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Re: [CentOS-virt] Windows Xen VM's have high guest CPU usage and poor performance

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 01/21/2010 05:18 AM, Ryan Pugatch wrote:
 Hello all,

 I have a PowerEdge 2950 that I am using to host Windows XP VM's under 
 CentOS.  I am experiencing poor performance in the Xen VM's.  Any time I 
 try to do something, the CPU usage (as reported by the Windows task 
 manager) hits 100% for a few and then drops back down.  This is causing 
 the VM's to run sluggish and be quite annoying to use.  Example.. I 
 click IE.. cpu hits 100% and IE takes a bit to open.  I go to a 
 website.. 100%.. I click a link.. 100%. This is the case even if I only 
 have one VM running.

 I now have 32 VM's running on the machine and dom0's cpu usage as 
 reported by xm top is 622%.  It seems like Xen is just performing poorly 
 while handling these Windows VMs.  Any suggestions?  I have Windows VM's 
 on other hardware (typically PowerEdge R905s and R710s and they seem ok).

 This 2950 is a decent machine.. 32G RAM, 2x Xeon E5405 (quad core) at 
 2ghz.  And I'm only allocating 1 CPU and 768MB RAM for each VM.

 Sample config:

 name = win01n
 maxmem = 768
 memory = 768
 vcpus = 1
 builder = hvm
 kernel = /usr/lib/xen/boot/hvmloader
 boot = c
 pae = 1
 acpi = 1
 apic = 0
 localtime = 1
 on_poweroff = destroy
 on_reboot = restart
 on_crash = restart
 device_model = /usr/lib64/xen/bin/qemu-dm
 usbdevice = tablet
 sdl = 0
 vnc = 1
 vncunused = 0
 vncdisplay = 1
 disk = [ 'file:/var/xen/running/win01n,ioemu:hda,w' ]
 vif = [ bridge=xenbr0 ]
 serial = pty



 Thanks in advance for any insight!

   
Check Pasi's advices from 
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-virt/2009-August/001121.html , 
maybe they apply to you too
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Re: [CentOS-virt] Slightly OT: FakeRaid or Software Raid

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 12/02/2009 06:30 PM, Neil Aggarwal wrote:
 I have had great luck with nvidia fakeraid on RAID1, but I 
 see there are 
 preferences for software raid.
 

 I have always heard that fakeraid and software RAID
 perform the same.
   
performance wise they are the same 'cause fakeraid is still a software 
implementation. flexibility and portability wise
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Re: [CentOS-virt] Slightly OT: FakeRaid or Software Raid

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 12/02/2009 11:49 PM, Ben M. wrote:
 Thanks. The portability bonus is a big one. Just two other questions I 
 think.

 - Raid1 entirely in dom0?
   
that's what I do, for simplicity sake. I do all raid in Dom0, usually 
also LVM (sometime I do use simple/plain/old partitions in dom0 and LVM 
is domU, but very rarely).
after that it's fairly easy to create a new LV (or simply a file in 
/var/lib/xen/images -- even if it's just bind-mounted from another disk) 
and use it for the new VMs
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Re: [CentOS-virt] Slightly OT: FakeRaid or Software Raid

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 12/03/2009 03:08 AM, Grant McWilliams wrote:

 Personally, I never touch raid5, but then, I'm on sata.   I do agree
 that there are benifits to hardware raid with battery backed cache if
 you do use raid5 (but I think raid5 is usually a mistake, unless it's
 all read only, in which case you are better off using main memory for
 cache.  you are trading away small write performance to get space;
  with
 disk, space is cheap and performance is expensive, so personally, if
 I'm going to trade I will trade in the other direction.)


 Interesting thoughts on raid5 although I doubt many would agree. I 
 don't see how the drive
 type has ANYTHING to do with the RAID level. There are different RAID 
 levels for different situations
 I guess but a RAID 10  (or 0+1) will never reach the write or read 
 performance 
 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/external-raid-storage,1922-9.html 
 of a RAID-5. The disk space waste
 isn't too much of a problem anymore because as you say drives are 
 getting much cheaper. Although on that subject
 I'll mention that enterprise drives and desktop drives are NOT the 
 same thing. We deal in hundreds of drives and see
 about a 3% failure on desktop drives and only a fraction of that on 
 enterprise drives.

 I will say though that in my opinion the one really important thing to 
 consider is the price. These controllers
 aren't cheap and if you skimp you will pay. For sequential single 
 reads (streaming one stream) I'd consider
 using a software RAID 0. For a mirror I'd consider Software RAID but 
 once I get serious and go for RAID5 or RAID6 I'd
 only use Hardware RAID.
and none of this options is the answer to the problem FakeRaid or 
Software Raid :))
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Re: [CentOS-virt] VLAN bridge config for xen - Was: Controlling allocation of ethernet devices and KVM

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 11/28/2009 12:43 AM, Tait Clarridge wrote:
 The init scripts support VLANs and bridges out of the box. Adding more 
 scripts is not necessary.
 


 Interesting, XEN specific scripts? Or CentOS scripts.
   
Neither. When using centos, vlan related modules are loaded 
automatically after specifying VLAN=YES in sysconfig/network. And 
vlan/bridge interfaces are configured exactly the same as normal 
interfaces
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Re: [CentOS-virt] VLAN bridge config for xen - Was: Controlling allocation of ethernet devices and KVM

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 11/28/2009 01:05 AM, Tait Clarridge wrote:
 On Sat, 2009-11-28 at 00:50 +0200, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
   
 On 11/28/2009 12:43 AM, Tait Clarridge wrote:
 
 The init scripts support VLANs and bridges out of the box. Adding more 
 scripts is not necessary.
 
 
 Interesting, XEN specific scripts? Or CentOS scripts.
   
   
 Neither. When using centos, vlan related modules are loaded 
 automatically after specifying VLAN=YES in sysconfig/network. And 
 vlan/bridge interfaces are configured exactly the same as normal 
 interfaces
 

 Interesting, thanks for the info. Can I specify which VLANs it is going
 to configure and bridge?
Of course you can. It's all well documented and published at 
www.centos.org/docs
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Re: [CentOS-virt] VLAN bridge config for xen - Was: Controlling allocation of ethernet devices and KVM

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 11/28/2009 01:24 AM, Tait Clarridge wrote:
 Interesting, thanks for the info. Can I specify which VLANs it is going
 to configure and bridge?
   
 Of course you can. It's all well documented and published at 
 www.centos.org/docs
 

 I am well aware of the docs, must have missed that section.

 I was relatively new to VLANs when I used the script, and in the script
 we have it so we can easily change the vlan trunk interface without
 having to change the name and internals of all the ifcfg scripts.

 Just my two cents, I like having very portable scripts instead of doing
 a mass reconfiguration I can change one line and its all good.
   
I am sure that must be very handy when you manage several dozens systems 
via puppet
but as you have said, to each their own. you prefer slackware, I prefer 
centos.
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Re: [CentOS-virt] Testing new Xen Version and rollback.

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 10/09/2009 01:57 AM, Ben M. wrote:
 I do not have a comprehensive grasp on startup scripts, as well as what 
 files are not rolled into the kernel itself.

 In other words, I don't understand yet when a new kernel is installed, 
 whether there are any support files that come with it, or whether 
 everything that, for instance, the Xen kernel needs, are entirely within 
 that kernel file (hardware drivers).
   
the normal centos kernel comes with lots of drivers compiled as modules. 
using tar tjf on the kernel provided by stacklet will let you know what 
modules does this one include...


 If it is just a matter of having a section for it in grub.conf.
   
depmod, used as described on the site, will not touch the rest of your 
system. and note that if using the new kernel only inside DomU (thus 
leaving Dom0 intact) AND using the first method that is described on 
that page, you do not have to touch ANY grub.conf at all ( by using the 
kernel directive inside the VM's config file, as described in the first 
part of the page)

actually the instructions given over there are pretty sane and - if 
respected - will not harm in any way the existing systems (either Dom0 
or DomU). unlike gitco, which, as you have seen, has a much more 
invasive approach.
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Re: [CentOS-virt] I/O load distribution

[Manuel Wolfshant]

Dennis J. wrote:
 Hi,
 What is the best way to deal with I/O load when running several VMs on a 
 physical machine with local or remote storage?

 What I'm primarily worried about is the case when several VMs cause disk 
 I/O at the same time. One example would be the updatedb cronjob of the 
 mlocate package. If you have say 5 VMs running on a physical System with a 
 local software raid-1 as storage and the all run updatedb at the same time 
 that causes all of them to run really slowly because the starve each other 
 fighting over the disk.

   
In this particular case, I would edit /etc/crontab on each VM and move 
the update at another time instead of the traditional 4:02



 What is the best way to soften the impact of such a situation? Does it make 
 sense to use a hardware raid instead? How would the raid type affect the 
 performance in this case? Would the fact that the I/O load gets distributed 
 across multiple spindles in, say, a 4 disk hardware raid-5 have a big 
 impact on this?

 I'm currently facing the problem where I fear that random disk I/O by too 
 many VMs on a physical system could cripple their performance even though I 
 have plenty of CPU cores/RAM left to run them.

 Has anyone experience with this problem and maybe some data to shed some 
 light on this potential bottleneck for virtualization?

 Regards,
Dennis
   

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Re: [CentOS-virt] WinXP Xen guest: compare VNC vs RDP

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 04/22/2009 10:35 PM, Ed Heron wrote:
   I'm experimenting with using WinXP Xen guests as an alternative to 
 upgrading workstations.  The administrative advantages seem overwhelming.

   Please share thoughts about using VNC vs RDP for remote desktop 
 connections.
   
I had to create 6 windows XP instances for a project a couple of months 
ago. Here are our conclusions, now that the project is over and the VMs 
have been decommissioned:
- XP was MUCH faster in Xen, compared to real hardware (!)
- RDP beats VNC in terms of speed any time, any place. I cannot evaluate 
precisely the factor, but empirically I'd say that in our conditions 
(WAN link, 6 Mbps upstream link on one site shared with other projects,  
100 Mbps on the other site) it was at least 2-3 times faster.
- rdesktop ( the linux app) is really cool, as it allows you to 
share/transfer local resources to the remote XP session (for instance 
you can map a local directory as a remote networked disk, without the 
hassle of passing via Network Neigh.). VNC forces you to either 
explicitly map such resources (hence you would also need something like 
samba on the linux side) or use scp.
- the only problem with RDP is that by default Windows limits the number 
of simultaneous connections. but patches do exist (which violate the 
licensing/usage terms, so beware).

As of implementations issues .. I had two (or should I say three?) problems:
- one is detailed in an older thread on this list ( look for Using the 
parallel port from domU, 02/02/2009).
- second is due to Xen creating a large file with the same size as the 
disk given to the VM. I would have believed that sparse files would have 
been used, but df showed the opposite. I have seen 20 GB of space 
allocated, despite XP only using less than 5.
- last issue did not occur with stock Xen but with v3.3: Java inside the 
VM went nuts and starting consuming 99% of the processor.. while doing 
nothing. Once we reverted to stock Xen from C5.2, it went back to normal.

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Re: [CentOS-virt] xen-3.0.3-80.el5

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 03/18/2009 01:52 AM, Shane Goulden wrote:
 I've realised it probably won't be available for CentOS 5.2 as it's a 
 package for RHEL 5.3, so it will probably come with CentOS 5.3 I'm 
 guessing..?
That is correct. Centos 5.3 will ship with xen-3.0.3-80.el5



 On 18/03/2009, at 10:46 AM, Shane Goulden wrote:

 When will Xen-3.0.3-80.el5 be available for CentOS 5.2?

 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2009-0118.html

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Re: [CentOS-virt] virtualizaton install and xen source compile on CentOS5.2

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 03/05/2009 10:14 PM, Aaron Linnen wrote:
 From: Jerry Amundson jamun...@gmail.com
 Date: 03/05/2009 01:27 PM
   
 On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 8:04 AM, mica fang micaf...@gmail.com wrote:
   
 
 Kai Schaetzl  wrote on Thu, Mar 5 13:31:18 UTC 2009

 
   
 why don't you use the officially released stuff or the rpms?
   
 
 I have followed this http://www.ruslansivak.com/index.cfm/Xen to install
 xen-dom0
 
   
 Those are not the officially released CentOS rpms. Hopefully, someone
 responds to your comment there.

 Otherwise, if you do not need Xen 3.2, just yum groupinstall 
 Virtualization.

 jerry
   
 
 There are also RPMs I've looked at but not yet tried hosted here: 
 http://www.gitco.de/repo/
 Has anyone else here given them a try?
   
I did. My scenario was the following
- host: C5.2/x86_64, fully updated. Needed to run Win XP/32 as VM, with 
full access to the parallel port given to a very special Windows driver 
(which controls a development board)
- in the guest we have to run a commercial tool based on Eclipse  (Java).

With stock xen, I was unable to transfer control of the parallel port to 
the guest. It simply did not see the port, no matter what I have tried
With xen-3.3 from gitco and the same xen config, the port was correctly 
identified and could be used from Windows. On the other hand, Java 
started to consume 99% of the CPU making the VM impossible to use.


See also 
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-virt/2009-February/000836.html

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Re: [CentOS-virt] Using the parallel port from domU

[Manuel Wolfshant]

Short follow-up: I had to revert to the stock xen. With the newer 
version, Java in the VM went nuts, taking 99% of the CPU. Beats me why...

/me eagerly waiting for  the newer stock version



Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
Just for the record: due to lack of time (I am really really under 
 pressure and I do not have the time to compile the xen version from 
 5.3 ), I have switched to a custom built xen-3.3.0 and it works as it 
 should.

Manuel

 Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
 Hello

I use xen and I am trying to use the parallel port of Centos 5.2 
 host from a Windows XP (HVM) guest. I have tried to transfer control 
 of the port by blacklisting lp, parport and parport_pc + adding:
ioports = [ 0378-037a ]
 to the xen configuration file.

However, in the presence of this line, xm create replies with:

 Error: function takes exactly 4 arguments (3 given)
 [...]
Except of a bug from 2007 and which should be fixed for a long 
 time (and which is only PARTIALLY included in xen as available in 
 5.2), I have not found anything. I did apply the unapplied part of 
 http://bugs.centos.org/file_download.php?file_id=474type=bug but 
 there is no change.

Any ideas ?
TIA

   manuel



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Re: [CentOS-virt] Mixed dom0/domU usage?

[Manuel Wolfshant]

Dennis J. wrote:
 Hi,
 I'm wondering about the impact of using both dom0 and domU's on a server at 
 the same time. I'm worried about the performance impact of running a Mysql 
 server in a domU and now I'm thinking about moving the Mysql part of a LAMP 
 setup into dom0 and running a few Apache guests as domUs. Since the Apaches 
 will serve mostly from an NFS share they won't have much impact on the disk 
 i/o so the database should be able to utilize the local storage without 
 much interference from the guests. The plan is to limit dom0 to let's say 
 4gb of ram and then use the rest of it for the VMs.

 Has anyone experinece with this kind of mixed setup (physical/virtual). 
 Are there any known problems with this approach?
   
Go ahead, performance wise there is not much difference. I have a 
machine which runs 2 oracle instances (in separate domUs) + some other 
stuff in other VMs
Just make sure that your network card has a very good quality.  Do not 
even think about realtek and if possible avoid Broadcom. I've never 
heard anyone complaining about Intel.

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[CentOS-virt] Using the parallel port from domU

[Manuel Wolfshant]

Hello

I use xen and I am trying to use the parallel port of Centos 5.2 
host from a Windows XP (HVM) guest. I have tried to transfer control of 
the port by blacklisting lp, parport and parport_pc + adding:
ioports = [ 0378-037a ]
to the xen configuration file.

However, in the presence of this line, xm create replies with:

Error: function takes exactly 4 arguments (3 given)

In xend.log I see:
[2009-02-02 15:36:34 xend.XendDomainInfo 6246] DEBUG 
(XendDomainInfo:1603) XendDomainInfo.destroy: domid=13
[2009-02-02 15:36:34 xend 6246] ERROR (xmlrpclib2:184) function takes 
exactly 4 arguments (3 given)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/xen/util/xmlrpclib2.py, line 
162, in _marshaled_dispatch
response = self._dispatch(method, params)
  File /usr/lib64/python2.4/SimpleXMLRPCServer.py, line 406, in _dispatch
return func(*params)
  File 
/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/xen/xend/server/XMLRPCServer.py, 
line 64, in domain_create
info = XendDomain.instance().domain_create(config)
  File /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/xen/xend/XendDomain.py, line 
238, in domain_create
dominfo = XendDomainInfo.create(config)
  File /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/xen/xend/XendDomainInfo.py, 
line 205, in create
vm.initDomain()
  File /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/xen/xend/XendDomainInfo.py, 
line 1507, in initDomain
self.createDevices()
  File /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/xen/xend/XendDomainInfo.py, 
line 1716, in createDevices
self.createDevice(n, c)
  File /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/xen/xend/XendDomainInfo.py, 
line 1189, in createDevice
return self.getDeviceController(deviceClass).createDevice(devconfig)
  File 
/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/xen/xend/server/DevController.py, 
line 80, in createDevice
(devid, back, front) = self.getDeviceDetails(config)
  File /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/xen/xend/server/iopif.py, 
line 78, in getDeviceDetails
allow_access = True)
TypeError: function takes exactly 4 arguments (3 given)


Except of a bug from 2007 and which should be fixed for a long time 
(and which is only PARTIALLY included in xen as available in 5.2), I 
have not found anything. I did apply the unapplied part of 
http://bugs.centos.org/file_download.php?file_id=474type=bug but there 
is no change.

Any ideas ?
TIA

   manuel
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Re: [CentOS-virt] Best virtualization setup for Centos 5.2

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 01/22/2009 09:31 AM, Kai Schaetzl wrote:
 Dennis J. wrote on Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:00:24 +0100:

   
 Doing a hdparm -t on the host system consistently gives 
 me a result of about 70MB/sec yet in a KVM guest I get results ranging from 
 40MB/sec to 125MB/sec on each run.
 

 The higher results after the first run are from caching. Xen will give you 
 just a little bit less than the host. We are using only Xen and are happy 
 with 
 it. If you want to use CentOS on CentOS, there's nothing that beats Xen. 
 Absolutely stable, reliable and good performance.
   
same results here. 5.2 guest on 5.2 rocks. I have half a dozen 
installations (as in physical machines), one of them including several 
oracle instances as VMs [*], and not a single issue.


[*] no comment on oracle as VMs, please. it was not my decision.
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Re: [CentOS-virt] How to clone a guest for cold stand by

[Manuel Wolfshant]

Götz Reinicke wrote:

Hi,

what would be the shortest and fastest way to clone a e.g. basic 
Centos 5 guest for further use? For example I'd like to set up a 
master Mysql-server as a guest an than clone two additional slaves.
I have a lvm template, i.e. a simple volume with the OS skeleton ( a 
minimal install). When I need a new VM I do

- lvcreate newvolume
- mkfs newvolume
- mount template /mnt/source
- mount newvolume /mnt/destination
- cp -a /mnt/source /mnt/destination

wash, rinse, repeat as needed.




Which xen configfiles may be edited?

cp /etc/xen/template /etc/xen/newVM
vim /etc/xen/newVM



Can the config and the filesystem simply be copied?


yes.

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Re: [CentOS-virt] 5.1: problem opening console from vm manager

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 12/18/2007 10:46 PM, Kai Schaetzl wrote:
I can also switch and login with xm console, but using the vm manager 
way doesn't work. (BTW: how can I switch back from a DomU console to the 
Dom0 console in a terminal tab? When I exit it just logs me out and 
presents the login message of the DomU. It doesn't go back to the host 
console.

just like in telnet: ctrl ]
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