Re: HVM direct boot broken in xen-unstable

["Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange@redhat.com>]

On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 04:46:17PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Daniel P. Berrange writes ("Re: [Xen-devel] HVM direct boot broken in xen-unstable"):
> > On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 12:52:07AM +0000, Byrne, John (HP Labs) wrote:
> > > Hi!
> > > 
> > > On x86_64, changeset 18081, running/building on rhel5, trying to use
> > > the HVM direct boot causes the domain to reboot immediately and then
> > > the log says the domain is restarting too rapidly. No obvious hints 
> > > as to where the problem is. If I build the in-tree ioemu code, things
> > > work. Any clues as to where to look or how to get some useful debugging
> > > output?
> 
> Byrne, could you send me a copy of your config file so I can reproduce
> this ?  Also, some idea of how you made (or how you obtained) the
> kernel image and initramfs.  I don't think I've ever done a direct
> kernel boot using this code (which is in patches supplied by Daniel)
> and offhand I can't seem to find the documentation.

It works in the same way as booting PV off kernel+initrd - basically 
take a HVM guest config file and add

  loader="/usr/lib/xen/bin/hvmloader"
  kernel="/path/to/vmlinuz"
  ramdisk="/path/to/initrd"

The vmlinuz & initrd  would typically be the ones for installation
of your distro, eg The $URL/images/pxeboot/ files for Fedora/RHEL

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/9/Fedora/i386/os/images/pxeboot/

It should boot your kernel & initrd and not pay attention to hardisk
or CDROM devices.

As mentioned in the original commit logs, older kernels need to use the
evil helper, newer kernels should 'just work' (thanks to the relocatable
kernel support).

Daniel
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