From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ian Campbell Subject: Re: Generic PV Guests on XCP? Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010 19:45:35 +0000 Message-ID: <1269459935.28761.910.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: <38AD81989214D54EB5F20C69477AF6C10ADF1279@xmb-sjc-217.amer.cisco.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: In-Reply-To: <38AD81989214D54EB5F20C69477AF6C10ADF1279@xmb-sjc-217.amer.cisco.com> List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com Errors-To: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xensource.com To: "Phil Winterfield (winterfi)" Cc: "xen-devel@lists.xensource.com" , "DavidScott@eu.citrix.com" , "xen-api@lists.xensource.com" , "Don Banks (donbanks)" , "IanCampbell@eu.citrix.com" , "David.Cottingham@eu.citrix.com" List-Id: xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org On Wed, 2010-03-24 at 18:14 +0000, Phil Winterfield (winterfi) wrote:=20 > Has anyone attempted to run a generic (read non Linux/Windows) > paravirtualized guest OS instance on XCP -0.1.1? A good example would > just be building mini-OS and running it as a guest instance on XCP. > My company has PV OS prototype version of one of its products that has > been running on non-XCP versions of Xen and I would like to evaluate > whether XCP is a suitable platform. In order to do this I need to get > past some pretty basic questions and issues. For example, if you were > to run mini-OS in a VM, what template would you start with? I started > out with "Other install media" but it is unclear if that is > appropriate. I was able to create the guest instance shown below, but > that leads to the other questions, i.e. I don't think you want to start from a template here, since none of the existing ones meet your needs/usecase. You can create a basic VM instance with "xe vm-create" and then configure that however you need by modifying the various fields on the VM object. You may choose to convert it to a template for convenience of instantiating multiple copies (using "xe vm-install"). > 1) How do the old config file startup parameters for my OS > instance map to the new =E2=80=98xe=E2=80=99 syntax, e.g.=20 Given a VM UUID (call it $VM) returned by xe vm-create you can do "xe vm-param-set uuid=3D$VM param1=3Dval1 param2=3Dval2" just like you have b= een doing. I think the fields are all documented in the reference manual -- unfortunately I can't find the XCP version anywhere online. Does anyone know where this is? Until that document is found I think the core stuff you are interested in the same as on XenServer stuff so that reference doc should be enough to get you going: http://docs.vmd.citrix.com/XenServer/5.5.0/1.0/en_gb/api/docs/html/browse= r.html Once you have created the VM you probably want to set PV-bootloader, PV-kernel, PV-ramdisk, PV-args as you are now. If you aren't going to create a template then you can just use "xe vm-disk-add" to add disks to your VM as required. If you are going to convert to a template and install from there then it would be better to set other-config:disks to a suitable snippet of XML to create the appropriate disks at vm-install time -- see the existing templates for an example of the syntax. > memory =3D 2048 I think you have to use xe vm-memory-{static,dynamic}-range-set instead of vm-param-set for these ones. Each one takes a min and a max. In the first instance I'd just set them all the same, i.e. "2048MiB" but in the future if you are interested in enabling ballooning you can set ranges etc. > vcpu=3D1 Set VCPUs-max and VCPUs-at-startup. Again I would set them to the same value to start with until you want to be able to dynamically add more VCPUs than you started with to your VM without rebooting. > on_crash =3D 'coredump-destroy' You can set "action-after-crash" to one of "Preserve", "Destroy", "Restart". I don't know if there is a direct equivalent to coredump-destroy in XCP. > 2) How do I connect to the serial console on the OS instance? For > instance, when I do: The consoles are exported via XenAPI in VNC format. You need a XenAPI client which is capable of attaching to these. Looks like http://www.xvpsource.org/ is the place to look? Personally I usually use /opt/xensource/debug/vncproxy (copied to my workstation) to create a local socket on my workstation which is proxied to the XCP host and then run vncviewer locally against that proxy. Ian.