Xen 3.0.x on Debian Sarge

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Important.gif This page contains outdated content. YMMV. Use at your own risk

Guide to deploying Xen 3.0.x on Debian Sarge

Last updated: 2006-Jul-25 (Rev D)

This guide explains how to compile, install and setup Xen 3.0.x on Debian Sarge (a.k.a. stable). Feel free to add or clarify any sections if you have the knowledge.

Any questions can be directed to Mark Foster [1]

REFERENCES

PROCEDURE

Prepare the base system by installing Debian Sarge and a few packages. I prefer using the debian-installer CD to get Sarge up and running.

important.gif You may need to manually edit the apt sources.list in the installer to point to stable (sarge) sources, instead of testing (sid). This is because rc3 came out prior to sarge becoming stable. 

 aptitude install iproute iproute-dev bridge-utils twisted 
 aptitude install libcurl3 libcurl3-dev bzip2 ncurses-dev
 aptitude install make python python2.3-dev patch
 aptitude install gcc


Download Xen the source code from XenSource 

 cd /usr/src
 wget http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/downloads/xen-3.0.2-2-src.tgz

important.gif If you are upgrading on top of a Xen 2.0.x installation, move or rename the /etc/xen/scripts folder, lest your networking not work after the upgrade. 

 mv /etc/xen/scripts /etc/xen/scripts.old

Untar, compile and install. 

 tar xzvf xen-3.0.2-2-src.tgz
 cd xen-3.0.2-2/
 make world
 make install

info.gif Alternatively, if your box has 4GB or more RAM, you will want to enable PAE so the Xen kernel can see the extra memory. The last two steps from above would be. 

 make XEN_TARGET_X86_PAE=y world
 make XEN_TARGET_X86_PAE=y install

If you encounter any problems in the steps above, double-check that your pre-requisite packages got installed correctly! Read the Xen user documentation and FAQ. Check the logs at /var/log/xend.log and /var/log/xend-debug.log Only after doing the proper amount of research should you utilitize the xen-users email list for help.

Now we need to add the xen0 kernel to the grub menu. This will vary depending on your setup. For instance, you will want the root= line to reference your / partition. I add the nousb kernel option to skip loading of USB code which has reportedly caused some problems on Dell PowerEdge hardware.


Here is an example of the xen kernel entry in /boot/grub/menu.lst 

 title Xen 3.0 / XenLinux 2.6.12
   root  (hd0,1)
   kernel /xen.gz dom0_mem=128000 noreboot console=tty0
   module /vmlinuz-2.6.12-xen0 root=/dev/sda1 nousb
 
 ### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

info.gif Note the last line in the section above. It is better to put your Xen grub entry above this line, so that your default kernel will not fluctuate if you happen to pick up any new kernel images using apt-get. (There is no need to run grub-install after editing menu.lst because grub reads the file from the filesystem.)

The xen developer team recommendeds we move the native TLS libraries on the Dom0 system out of the way as they are a real drag on performance. 

 mv /lib/tls /lib/tls.disabled

Now go ahead and reboot. Choose the Xen kernel when the system comes back up. 

 reboot

Once you have rebooted into the Xen kernel, start the xen daemon. 

 xend start

Next, see Debian Sarge on Xen, Centos-3 on Xen or Centos-4 on Xen to setup some virtual machines (aka DomUs). or setup your own. You can choose from just about any flavor of Linux, and soon FreeBSD, Win2K3/XP etc.


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