[Xen-users] Transitioning from multi-boot to Xen

[Chris Jones <cjns1989@xxxxxxxxx>]

I am looking into setting up Xen 4.0 on a simple dual-boot
Windows/ubuntu laptop with the following partitions:

|  Device      Boot    Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
|  /dev/sda1   *           1         223     1782784    7  HPFS/NTFS
|  /dev/sda2             223       21713   172624888    7  HPFS/NTFS
|  /dev/sda3           35854       38914    24576344    7  HPFS/NTFS
|  /dev/sda4           21713       28522    54686721    5  Extended
|  /dev/sda5           21713       24145    19530752   83  Linux
|  /dev/sda6           24145       26090    15624192   82  Linux swap
|  /dev/sda7           26090       28522    19529728   83  Linux

I did a minimal ‘server type’ install of debian squeeze in /dev/sda7 and
downloaded the Xen kernel and other packages per the debian wiki. 

Now, I am a confused as to what to do next. 

The laptop currently boots off of the default grub2 bootloader installed
in the /dev/sda5 ubuntu 10.10 partition. I understand I need to manually
add a ‘Xen’ stanza pointing to /dev/sda7 and the Xen kernel to for
instance /etc/grub.d/40_custom - and run ‘update-grub’ so that I end up
with the corresponding entry in /boot/grub/grub.cfg, but I can't seem to
find any sample or description of how I should code this additional
stanza.

By fiddling with grub interactively, I eventually came up with a stanza
that looks something like:

| menuentry "Xen ..."
| insmod ext2
| set root=(hd0,7)
| multiboot /boot/xen4.0-686.2.32.5.gz
| module /boot/vmlinuz-xen-686.2.32.5.gz
| module /boot/initrd-xen-686.2.32.5.gz

This¹ actually boots ‘something’, presumably my initrd but the boot
messages go by too quickly for me to tell what is actually going on or
see if there are any errors. 

Eventually, after displaying messages re: USB initialization, the boot
process stops and when I hit enter, the following prompt is displayed:

| (initramfs)

This is apparently some form of minimal shell where I can enter basic
commands, such as ‘mount’, ‘ps’.. ’ping’.. ’route’, etc. and even run
‘top’.

But, as far as I can tell, my root partition is not mounted.

Has anyone a working environment based on debian squeeze and Xen 4.0,
and if so, could they either point me to the documentation that they
used or even post a sample grub2 stanza?

Thanks,

cj

¹ Probably not the actual file names in the sample stanza above.

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