xen console on laptop screen

xen console on laptop screen

[Dan Magenheimer]

Sorry for the possibly silly question.  No luck
with various googling.

I have a Dell laptop, booting xen-unstable, dom0 kernel
is the linux-2.6.18-xen.hg from xenbits but running in
a full RHEL5u3 boot/environment.  (X fails to
come up properly on the laptop display, but I can
access a full graphical virtual display via vnc.)

I'd like to be able to access the Xen console from
the laptop keyboard/display, e.g. to see Xen console
output and to type ^A^A^A to get back and forth from
Xen to dom0, and use debug keys to Xen console.

Is this possible?

If so, could you tell me what the magic grub parameters
are, and any other changes inside the dom0 filesystem
(e.g. /etc/inittab??)

If not (I'm told keyboard input may be an issue), I
can move cables and use the laptop serial port, but
that's much more of a pain... and I tried it once
without luck, probably not getting the grub magic
correct (though I've gotten external console to work
successfully on a different machine).  Any suggestions
or help on serial port configuration for a laptop
would be appreciated then too.

Thanks,
Dan

Re: xen console on laptop screen

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk]

> I'd like to be able to access the Xen console from
> the laptop keyboard/display, e.g. to see Xen console
> output and to type ^A^A^A to get back and forth from
> Xen to dom0, and use debug keys to Xen console.
> 
> Is this possible?

Yes. Add this:

 xen.gz  sync_console console=vga guest_loglvl=all  loglvl=all

Re: xen console on laptop screen

[Sander Eikelenboom]

Hi Dan,

Funny, i was trying to get the same working ..doing some grub magic myself.

I now have the following:
- normal console on tty1
- serial console on hvc0

- All log output from hypervisor and kernel on both consoles
- Login on normal tty1 console
- Xen hypervisor console (3x ctrl-a still required) on the serial console


--

Sander



This is the grub magic i use (don't know if it's correct, but it works, so therefore it must be ;-) )

title           Xen-3.4.2-amd64 / Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.29.6-amd64-xenified-dom0
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /xen-3.4.2.gz dom0_mem=768M com1=115200,8n1 console=com1,vga
module          /vmlinuz-2.6.29.6 root=/dev/mapper/serveerstertje-root ro pci=nomsi console=hvc0 console=tty1 earlyprintk=xen
module          /initrd.img-2.6.29.6



And relevant part inittab:




# /sbin/getty invocations for the runlevels.
#
# The "id" field MUST be the same as the last
# characters of the device (after "tty").
#
# Format:
#  <id>:<runlevels>:<action>:<process>
#
# Note that on most Debian systems tty7 is used by the X Window System,
# so if you want to add more getty's go ahead but skip tty7 if you run X.
#
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1
2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
#4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 vcsa
#5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5
#6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6

h0:12345:respawn:/sbin/getty -L hvc0 115200 vt100









Tuesday, December 8, 2009, 9:49:18 PM, you wrote:

> Sorry for the possibly silly question.  No luck
> with various googling.

> I have a Dell laptop, booting xen-unstable, dom0 kernel
> is the linux-2.6.18-xen.hg from xenbits but running in
> a full RHEL5u3 boot/environment.  (X fails to
> come up properly on the laptop display, but I can
> access a full graphical virtual display via vnc.)

> I'd like to be able to access the Xen console from
> the laptop keyboard/display, e.g. to see Xen console
> output and to type ^A^A^A to get back and forth from
> Xen to dom0, and use debug keys to Xen console.

> Is this possible?

> If so, could you tell me what the magic grub parameters
> are, and any other changes inside the dom0 filesystem
> (e.g. /etc/inittab??)

> If not (I'm told keyboard input may be an issue), I
> can move cables and use the laptop serial port, but
> that's much more of a pain... and I tried it once
> without luck, probably not getting the grub magic
> correct (though I've gotten external console to work
> successfully on a different machine).  Any suggestions
> or help on serial port configuration for a laptop
> would be appreciated then too.

> Thanks,
> Dan





-- 
Best regards,
 Sander                            mailto:linux@eikelenboom.it

Re: xen console on laptop screen

[Keir Fraser]

On 08/12/2009 20:49, "Dan Magenheimer" <dan.magenheimer@oracle.com> wrote:

> If not (I'm told keyboard input may be an issue), I
> can move cables and use the laptop serial port, but
> that's much more of a pain... and I tried it once
> without luck, probably not getting the grub magic
> correct (though I've gotten external console to work
> successfully on a different machine).  Any suggestions
> or help on serial port configuration for a laptop
> would be appreciated then too.

VGA output should be easy, but Xen has no keyboard driver so no way will
debug keys work. Serial ports can be a pain if their I/O resources are in
non-standard places, and/or the crystal runs at a non-standard frequency.
These values can be specified manually on the Xen command line (if you know
what they should be!).
com1=<baud>[/<clock_hz>][,<#data><#parity><#stop>[,<io-base>[,<irq>]]].

 -- Keir