console only on fedora?

[Tom Horsley]

I just successfully got a paravirtualized openSUSE 10.2 system
running as a guest under Fedora Core 6 (x86_64 all around).

I did it by installing suse in native mode, then editing
the /boot/grub/menu.1st file to boot the xen kernel by default,
then tweaking the config file I had laying around from a
previous test to define the physical disk partitions the
same way in the guest as they are in the host.

This all worked (much to my amazement :-), but when I try
to open the console from virt-manager, it tells me
"Console not available".

Is the console implemented by some special kernel module I
probably don't have in the suse xen kernel? Just trying to
learn how all this stuff fits together...
(Not really a critical bit since I can access the guest
just fine via the network).

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 08:04:18PM -0500, Tom Horsley wrote:
> I just successfully got a paravirtualized openSUSE 10.2 system
> running as a guest under Fedora Core 6 (x86_64 all around).
>
> I did it by installing suse in native mode, then editing
> the /boot/grub/menu.1st file to boot the xen kernel by default,
> then tweaking the config file I had laying around from a
> previous test to define the physical disk partitions the
> same way in the guest as they are in the host.
>
> This all worked (much to my amazement :-), but when I try
> to open the console from virt-manager, it tells me
> "Console not available".

Yes, that means the graphical framebuffer is not available in the guest
kernel. You should still have the traditional text based serial console
(use View -> Serial console menu)
> Is the console implemented by some special kernel module I
> probably don't have in the suse xen kernel? Just trying to
> learn how all this stuff fits together...

The console is an add on patch we wrote for Fedora Core 6, which was not
in upstream Xen 3.0.3 guest kernels / Dom0 userspace. We've been working
to get it incorporated in upstream xen-unstable.hg repository and it was
finally accepted last week.  So unless they've taken the Fedora patch
already, most other distros won't see a graphical guest console until they
update to the Xen 3.0.4 tree for their guest kernels.

Regards,
Dan.
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[Tom Horsley]

On Thu, 14 Dec 2006 01:40:37 +0000
"Daniel P. Berrange"  wrote:
> The console is an add on patch we wrote for Fedora Core 6, which was not
> in upstream Xen 3.0.3 guest kernels / Dom0 userspace.

Thanks for the info. I'm gratified to see that some of the things
I imagine might be going on actually match reality - my internal
Xen model must be getting better as I play with it :-).