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[Xen-users] Install XP on sata XEN

To: xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Xen-users] Install XP on sata XEN
From: Mike Power <mpower@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:48:46 -0700
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Mike Power wrote:
How are you guys going about installing XP on sata Xen?

When ever I start up the domU using the XP cdrom as the boot device. Then the XP installer bails out because it can not find a hard drive to install on. Is this because the hard drive I am pointing at is a sata drive?

Mike Power

That was my original email sent to the list it seems it never arrived. I shall try again. But I have news.

A good way for me to trouble shoot this was to try and install windows natively. This allowed me to determine that Windows (despite contrary advertisements) could not support installs on SATA. Classic solution config BIOS and turn off AHCI. Reboot into Linux-xen start the domU and it detects the harddrives.

Also it was mentioned on another post (that I replied to, also eaten) that someone was having trouble using an XP Pro upgrade disk. I had the same problem. I could not eject the XP Pro upgrade disk and insert the Windows 98 disk because windows would say it wasn't the correct disk or it could not read it. Also I could not create an iso of the 98 disk as windows would say the same thing. Some developer should investigate this, it sounds like a problem within Xen itself. It is likely that windows is doing something funky, but it seems more likely that xen could be improved further in this area.

I solved the problem by plugging in another cdrom(ide) drive into the computer. XP Pro upgrade was in one, Windows 98 was in the other. Lucky for me Microsoft did a good job in this area and checked the other cdrom.

Other notes, I told windows to do a full (not quick) format of my 80 gb drive and it failed... Something for a developer to look at.

I passed this failure by doing a quick format of the drive.

However now I am stuck.

Some last thoughts before I break into the details of where I am currently at.

I think the idea of Xen and hardware virtualization is a euphoric idea. The idea that I can relegate my windows to a domU that runs almost at 100% instead of buying a whole seperate box is awesome.

Some tough love though, you have a slew of features but lack the quality it needs for consumption. It is good to distribute to a testing community to find bugs, but not for production use. I have twelve disk lines each of which represents a hurdle I needed to over come to proceed on the installation of windows.

Not to let the tone end on a negative note I have seen what xen is capable of, you have done some awesome work. You have a wide array of features. I would encourage you to take some time away from future feature development and spent some time boiling the quality down. One last suggestion info info info. Too often the difference between something like printf("Error") and printf("Error: %s") is hours of my time. Your program has the information I need yet it doesn't volunteer it.

For example right now my domU won't boot off the hard disk. I experimented by removing the hard drive from the disk line. The result was the same. So now I do not know if the bios can't see my hard drive or it just can't boot my hard drive. A simple list of detected sata drives would save me loads of time.

Again I say info, info, info, quality, quality, quality, quality and pretty soon you'll see a random developer like me writing scripts to install domUs. With the result that all a user will need to do is click on a check box or two and he'll have XP, Vista, MacOSX, Linux you name it all running within Xen. You could be as common as gnome.

Mike Power
Awesome job, keep up the good work. It would be nice if one of you could help me over my current hurdle.


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