XEN on a USB stick

XEN on a USB stick

[Eivind]

Hello all, 

Does anyone of you have some experience with booting XEN of a usb
stick? I have been able to boot Linux from it, but never attempted
booting XEN of it. With a 512Mb USB stick you should at least be able
to boot a minimal version of LFS and DSL from it.

I googled for a entry in the dev-list without any luck. Just thought
that I'd run the idea by you guys before I spent much time tinkering
around with it.

Best regards,
NeZz


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Re: XEN on a USB stick

[Mark Williamson]

> Does anyone of you have some experience with booting XEN of a usb
> stick? I have been able to boot Linux from it, but never attempted
> booting XEN of it. With a 512Mb USB stick you should at least be able
> to boot a minimal version of LFS and DSL from it.

If Xen / XenLinux will boot on your system then they should be able to boot 
from a pendrive.  You'll have to set the relevant USB options in dom0's 
config before compiling it.

We'd be pleased to see this working.  A while ago we proposed a PC 
architecture which used Xen (or something similar) as a next generation BIOS 
replacement - part of that vision is to have Xen / dom0 (safe hardware 
interface / next gen bios controller in our plan) boot off flash.

Cheers,
Mark

> I googled for a entry in the dev-list without any luck. Just thought
> that I'd run the idea by you guys before I spent much time tinkering
> around with it.
>
> Best regards,
> NeZz
>
>
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Re: XEN on a USB stick

[Adam Sulmicki]

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Mark Williamson wrote:

> We'd be pleased to see this working.  A while ago we proposed a PC
> architecture which used Xen (or something similar) as a next generation BIOS
> replacement - part of that vision is to have Xen / dom0 (safe hardware
> interface / next gen bios controller in our plan) boot off flash.

do you have more details on this proposal ?

shouldn't be too difficult to do:

 	LinuxBIOS -> Linux Kernel -> Kexec -> Xen + Dom0

(in fact I have something more similar on my setup exept that the kexec 
gets xen and xenolinux over network instead of from CF)).





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Re: XEN on a USB stick

[Eric S. Johansson]

Eivind wrote:
> Hello all, 
> 
> Does anyone of you have some experience with booting XEN of a usb
> stick? I have been able to boot Linux from it, but never attempted
> booting XEN of it. With a 512Mb USB stick you should at least be able
> to boot a minimal version of LFS and DSL from it.

suggestion, start with Devil Linux.  Change the CD-ROM creation process 
to create a CompactFlash image.  This image would be loaded onto flash 
(duh) and stuck in a CompactFlash to IDE adapter.  Then, using the 
built-in capabilities of devil Linux to load up its configuration off of 
usb flash sticks.

then xenify it



-- 
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2004/12/18/heloise/index.html

The basis of Abelard's philosophy, which he taught to Heloise, was
that logic had to be applied to religion in order to arrive at the
truth.


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Re: XEN on a USB stick

[Fred Richards]

Eivind <gentoo.warrior <at> gmail.com> writes:

> 
> Hello all, 
> 
> Does anyone of you have some experience with booting XEN of a usb
> stick? I have been able to boot Linux from it, but never attempted
> booting XEN of it. With a 512Mb USB stick you should at least be able
> to boot a minimal version of LFS and DSL from it.
> 
> I googled for a entry in the dev-list without any luck. Just thought
> that I'd run the idea by you guys before I spent much time tinkering
> around with it.
> 


I've built a car pc for a friend... he tried booting off a USB stick (1.0) ...
took awhile.  The other guy had the right idea with the CF/IDE.  Also, we used
pebble linux.  

 Xen-on-a-usb-stick would be a neat idea... let me know how it goes.  



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Re: XEN on a USB stick

[Garth Dahlstrom]

It might be possible to adapt the xencd demo that Jared produced using
the method describled here:

http://www.northern.ca/forums/index.php?t=msg&th=114 

This method is basically using FreeDOS -> LoadLin -> FeatherLinux ...
if you can start Xen from Loadlin you should have no probs switching
in XenCD for Feather.

Maybe if I get a chance tomorrow, I'll have a go at it.

-- 
Northern.CA ===--
http://www.northern.ca/
Canada's Search Engine


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Re: Re: XEN on a USB stick

[Eric S. Johansson]

Fred Richards wrote:
> I've built a car pc for a friend... he tried booting off a USB stick (1.0) ...
> took awhile.  The other guy had the right idea with the CF/IDE.  

probably more scar tissue than right idea.  Here's a source of those 
adapters.

http://mach5products.com/PRODCF/CFproducts.htm

this kind of adapter is probably found all over the world in little 
shops everywhere.  I've dealt with these people (Mach 5 products) before 
and have been happy with them.  The customer of mine has also purchased 
a series of their adapters as we are converting all of customer's 
firewalls (IP cop) to flash based systems.

---eric

-- 
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2004/12/18/heloise/index.html

The basis of Abelard's philosophy, which he taught to Heloise, was
that logic had to be applied to religion in order to arrive at the
truth.


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Re: XEN on a USB stick

[Eivind]

Hello All, 

Thank you all for your help, and I got it working by using the
previously released XenCD. Dumping the entire content of the CD onto
the usb stick and then install grub on it - works perfectly.

However, some tweaks was necessary. My FAT16 (0x06) FS does not
support filenames longer than 8 characters + the extension. menu.list
in /boot/grub (on my usb stick) must be changed appropriately.

Second, run grub and execute: 
- "root (hd1,0)" - this is the MBR of your usb stick (make sure you
are not choosing any other HD on your system ;o)
- "find /boot/grub/stage1" (make sure you are using the right path -
not your host system's /boot. On my system I must mount /dev/hda1 on
/boot. Instead, I created a symlink for /boot/grub to point to my usb
device boot/grub/ directory.
This last step should give you the options of the HDs in your system.
- "setup (hd1,0)" which points to my usb drive.

I am sure there is any other way to do this as well. But it works the
way I intended it to...

Again, Thanks a lot for your help
- Eivind


On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 20:13:36 -0500, Eric S. Johansson <esj@harvee.org> wrote:
> Eivind wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >
> > Does anyone of you have some experience with booting XEN of a usb
> > stick? I have been able to boot Linux from it, but never attempted
> > booting XEN of it. With a 512Mb USB stick you should at least be able
> > to boot a minimal version of LFS and DSL from it.
> 
> suggestion, start with Devil Linux.  Change the CD-ROM creation process
> to create a CompactFlash image.  This image would be loaded onto flash
> (duh) and stuck in a CompactFlash to IDE adapter.  Then, using the
> built-in capabilities of devil Linux to load up its configuration off of
> usb flash sticks.
> 
> then xenify it
> 
> --
> http://www.salon.com/books/review/2004/12/18/heloise/index.html
> 
> The basis of Abelard's philosophy, which he taught to Heloise, was
> that logic had to be applied to religion in order to arrive at the
> truth.
>


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