Re: xenning gentoo

[Derek Glidden <dglidden@illusionary.com>]

Eric S. Johansson wrote:
> hopefully I will be ready xen up a new gentoo box.  since packages 
> doesn't list anything in terms of ebuilds, I assume I should use the 
> ebuilds found here?
> 
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70161)

I'll have to look at this.  I made my own ebuilds.  It's almost 
pathetically simple as the Xen team has made it really easy since "make" 
puts everything under the "install" directory of the source tree.

> anything else I should know about gentoo and xen that hasn't been 
> discussed already in the mailing list?

I've got a production box up with gentoo as the Dom0 and DomU domains 
working just fine.  I am even able to script the creation/recycling of 
VMs.

Assuming you're using the 2.6 Xen kernel:

Mount the filesystem you're using for the new VM.
Untar the appropriate stage3 file into the new filesystem.
Untar the portage snapshot into the new filesystem.
Copy the appropriate modules into ${VM}/lib/modules. (If you're enabling 
modules in the VM.)
Put the correct make.conf, fstab, rc.conf, hostname, dnsdomainname, 
resolv.conf and conf.d/net in place under /etc.
I remove /etc/runlevels/boot/consolefont and /etc/runlevels/boot/keymaps 
because they just aren't necessary under Xen, and under UML which I had 
been using they lock the VM up when they try to run.  They may work 
under Xen, but it doesn't hurt anything to not have them.
(chroot to the new filesystem for the following steps)
Symlink the right zonefile to /etc/localtime.
Run "rc-update" and add "domainname", "net.eth0" and "sshd" to the 
"default" runlevel.
Set the root password.

Unmount and "xm create" and off you go.

When you reboot you'll need to emerge "udev", "sysfsutils" and "hotplug" 
then "rc-update add coldplug boot" for it to find all its devices.

Works like a charm.




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