Re: [Xen-users] Semi-Noob looking for some general answers

["Christopher G. Stach II" <cgs@xxxxxxxxx>]

Gary W. Smith wrote:
> So I have decided to start working with other distro's.  I started with
> the pre made ones over at jailtime.  Trying to use those distro's I
> found that they didn't work unless I had a DomU kernel inside of the
> Dom0 (hey, it's still a learning experience).  So I copied the rPath
> DomU kernel + lib's from the image to a directory on the Dom0 and
> pointed the gentoo config there and sure enough it booted.  But inside
> of the DomU I don't have any of the lib's for the kernel (such as
> iptables, etc). My next try was to include the /lib directory from the
> rPath DomU into the gentoo image and it booted just fine (using the
> bootloader = '/usr/bin/pygrub').  Everything appeared to work fine but I
> started slowing noticing odd things happen (including kernel panics).  

If you build a custom kernel for your domU, the image would sit in
dom0's filesystem, as you found out.  The modules that you build at the
same time you build that kernel need to be copied into the domU
filesystem.  It would be something like ``mount /dev/vg0/guest-root
/mnt/foo ; cp -a /lib/modules/2.6.16.28-xenU /mnt/foo/lib/modules ;
umount /mnt/foo''.  The distro's kernel and related modules would be
useless if you build your own guest kernel, which you should, in dom0.
Personally, I know what the domUs are used for, so I don't use modules
at all and compile the capabilities straight into the kernel.  There are
pros and cons of each way, but if you aren't looking for every last bit
of performance and squeezing every last bit of memory out of your box,
you don't lose much/gain very little by using modules.

> My opinion is that some of these Distro's seem to be lagging behind for
> DomU support in general.  I'd like to use each one of the Distro's with
> their kernel's any not some kernel from another Distro who may have done
> things much differently.

Not really.  If you were more concerned with bleeding edge code than
stability, you wouldn't be using a formal distro and waiting for them to
stabilize things.  You'd be hacking on Gentoo (although, they are
disgustingly out of date when it comes to Xen) or rolling your own out
of Debian or something.

-- 
Christopher G. Stach II


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