Xen 4.0 on RHEL6 beta

Xen 4.0 on RHEL6 beta

[Dan Magenheimer]

I played with installing Xen 4.0 on the RHEL6 beta a bit, worked my way
through/around some issues, ran into some other issues that were over
my head, and decided to give up for now.  But I thought I'd start a
basenote for anyone else who wants to try this.  If you get it working
(or even make more progress), please reply to this note.

Here's what I did:

1) Installed RH6 beta from x86_64 DVD.iso choosing software dev option
2) Installed mercurial rpm (on DVD... git is already there)
3) hg clone http://xenbits.xensource.com/xen-4.0-testing.hg
4) Found and installed FC13 uuid-devel and uuid rpms (but see below)
5) Found and installed FC13 dev86 rpm
6) Downloaded and installed acpica/iasl stuff

7) make world install (actually, for me, GIT_HTTP=y make ...)
   It appears that pvops dom0 2.6.31.13 gets downloaded.

8) I found that blktap2 seems to use some version of uuid-devel
that is inconsistent with FC13, so I turned off blktap2 in
the tools Makefile.  Not sure if uuid-devel is needed elsewhere
so it may be possible to disable that dependency rather than
find/install the rpm's as above.

9) I found that building stubdom caused some problems when
doing "make install" so I turned it off in the main Makefile.

10) make completed successfully (except for docs)

11) depmod 2.6.31.13
12) mkinitrd -f /boot/initrd-2.6.31.13.img 2.6.31.13

The mkinitrd had a lot of errors but still generated the initrd.  But
after looking at the errors and build-linux-2.6-pvoops_x86_64/.config
it appears that the default dom0 config file is missing a lot of
important config options so I didn't even attempt to boot dom0.

Things left to do:
o Figure out a complete dom0 config file that works on RHEL6beta
o Figure out all the options for mkinitrd
o Boot it!

Other stuff:
o Consider using a newer pvops git tree as RHEL6 is 2.6.32 (with
  a LOT of patches).
o Consider figuring out a simpler partitioning than the default
  install in case all the devmapper stuff causes problems.
o Ensure iptables is turned off (no option at install as RHEL5 has)

Re: Xen 4.0 on RHEL6 beta

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Fri, May 07, 2010 at 09:05:24AM -0700, Dan Magenheimer wrote:
> I played with installing Xen 4.0 on the RHEL6 beta a bit, worked my way
> through/around some issues, ran into some other issues that were over
> my head, and decided to give up for now.  But I thought I'd start a
> basenote for anyone else who wants to try this.  If you get it working
> (or even make more progress), please reply to this note.
> 

I haven't managed to try RHEL6 beta yet, but some comments still.. :)

> Here's what I did:
> 
> 1) Installed RH6 beta from x86_64 DVD.iso choosing software dev option
> 2) Installed mercurial rpm (on DVD... git is already there)
> 3) hg clone http://xenbits.xensource.com/xen-4.0-testing.hg
> 4) Found and installed FC13 uuid-devel and uuid rpms (but see below)
> 5) Found and installed FC13 dev86 rpm
> 6) Downloaded and installed acpica/iasl stuff
> 
> 7) make world install (actually, for me, GIT_HTTP=y make ...)
>    It appears that pvops dom0 2.6.31.13 gets downloaded.
> 

You could just do:

make xen
make tools
make stubdom

make install-xen
make install-tools
make install-stubdom

And then grab xen/stable-2.6.32.x branch manually from jeremy's xen.git.


> 8) I found that blktap2 seems to use some version of uuid-devel
> that is inconsistent with FC13, so I turned off blktap2 in
> the tools Makefile.  Not sure if uuid-devel is needed elsewhere
> so it may be possible to disable that dependency rather than
> find/install the rpm's as above.
> 
> 9) I found that building stubdom caused some problems when
> doing "make install" so I turned it off in the main Makefile.
> 
> 10) make completed successfully (except for docs)
> 
> 11) depmod 2.6.31.13
> 12) mkinitrd -f /boot/initrd-2.6.31.13.img 2.6.31.13
> 
> The mkinitrd had a lot of errors but still generated the initrd.  But
> after looking at the errors and build-linux-2.6-pvoops_x86_64/.config
> it appears that the default dom0 config file is missing a lot of
> important config options so I didn't even attempt to boot dom0.
> 
> Things left to do:
> o Figure out a complete dom0 config file that works on RHEL6beta

You could try my .config files that are derived from Fedora 11/12/13:
http://pasik.reaktio.net/xen/pv_ops-dom0-debug/config-2.6.32.10-pvops-dom0-xen-stable-x86_64

Copy that as .config and do "make oldconfig"

> o Figure out all the options for mkinitrd
>

Does RHEL6 still use mkinitrd? I thought they switched to dracut.

> o Boot it!
> 
> Other stuff:
> o Consider using a newer pvops git tree as RHEL6 is 2.6.32 (with
>   a LOT of patches).
>

Yeah, it's better to use 2.6.32 based dom0 tree.

> o Consider figuring out a simpler partitioning than the default
>   install in case all the devmapper stuff causes problems.
> o Ensure iptables is turned off (no option at install as RHEL5 has)
> 

-- Pasi

Re: Xen 4.0 on RHEL6 beta

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk]

> > o Figure out all the options for mkinitrd
> >
> 
> Does RHEL6 still use mkinitrd? I thought they switched to dracut.

They did and doing it via 'mkinitrd' makes it .. well, non-bootable.

Dan, try 'new-kernel-pkg --dracut --verbose 2.6.31.13' which does the
modification in /boot/grub/menu.lst and also creates the initramfs disk.

> 
> > o Boot it!
> > 
> > Other stuff:
> > o Consider using a newer pvops git tree as RHEL6 is 2.6.32 (with
> >   a LOT of patches).
> >
> 
> Yeah, it's better to use 2.6.32 based dom0 tree.

<nods>
> 
> > o Consider figuring out a simpler partitioning than the default
> >   install in case all the devmapper stuff causes problems.

It _ought_ to work. Haven't seen any errors in that department.

> > o Ensure iptables is turned off (no option at install as RHEL5 has)

Why? I know that sometimes it is pain to setup the right ports (you have to enable
port 22, 5901, etc) but once you get over that hump it gives you a nice
fuzzy feeling.

Re: Xen 4.0 on RHEL6 beta

[M A Young]

On Fri, 7 May 2010, Dan Magenheimer wrote:

> 8) I found that blktap2 seems to use some version of uuid-devel
> that is inconsistent with FC13, so I turned off blktap2 in
> the tools Makefile.  Not sure if uuid-devel is needed elsewhere
> so it may be possible to disable that dependency rather than
> find/install the rpm's as above.

That is I think the wrong uuid library. Fedora has two, and you probably 
wanted libuuid and libuuid-devel, which I think are available on RHEL6.

You might want to look at what I have done with Fedora kernels, at 
http://myoung.fedorapeople.org/dom0/ . There is also a xen source rpm in 
http://myoung.fedorapeople.org/dom0/src/ though it is currently a 
3.4.3-rc6 build because that is what I am testing at the moment.

 	Michael Young

Re: Xen 4.0 on RHEL6 beta

[M A Young]

I did manage to get an Fedora 12 SRPM to build on RHEL6, having added the 
following Fedora 12 packages in addition to those available in RHEL6

dev86.x86_64
iasl.x86_64
latex2html.noarch
pciutils.x86_64
pciutils-devel.x86_64
pciutils-libs.i686
pciutils-libs.x86_64
perl-Text-Unidecode.noarch
texi2html.noarch

 	Michael Young