Problem Installing Fedora 7 as a Guest on Xen machine

[Samad, Alex]

Hi

I have run into a problem installing fedora 7 as a guest on a Xen
machine.

The host machine is a amd64 - Debian lenny install. Running
2.6.20-1-xen-amd64

xm info

host                   : debxen

release                : 2.6.20-1-xen-amd64

version                : #1 SMP Tue Apr 24 22:23:22 UTC 2007

machine                : x86_64

nr_cpus                : 4

nr_nodes               : 1

sockets_per_node       : 2

cores_per_socket       : 2

threads_per_core       : 1

cpu_mhz                : 2800

hw_caps                :
178bfbff:ebd3fbff:00000000:00000010:00002001:00000000:0000001f

total_memory           : 8191

free_memory            : 1

xen_major              : 3

xen_minor              : 0

xen_extra              : .3-1

xen_caps               : xen-3.0-x86_64 hvm-3.0-x86_32 hvm-3.0-x86_32p
hvm-3.0-x86_64                                                          
xen_pagesize           : 4096

platform_params        : virt_start=0xffff800000000000

xen_changeset          : Tue Oct 17 22:09:52 2006 +0100

cc_compiler            : gcc version 4.1.2 20061028 (prerelease) (Debian
4.1.1-19)                                                             
cc_compile_by          : ultrotter

cc_compile_domain      : debian.org

cc_compile_date        : Fri Nov  3 00:21:27 CET 2006

xend_config_format     : 2   



I have downloaded the fedora 7 DVD, I have extracted the xen vmlinuz and
zen initrd.img

This is my fedora7.cfg
#

#  Kernel + memory size

#

kernel      = '/etc/xen/data/fedora7/vmlinuz'

ramdisk     = '/etc/xen/data/fedora7/initrd.img'

memory      = '1024'

extra           = 'pnpacpi=off sync_console vnc vncpassword=qwerty text
vncconnect=16.144.29.11'                                               
#bootloader     = '/usr/lib/xen-3.0.3-1/bin/pygrub'

 

#

#  Disk device(s).

#

disk        = [ 'phy:vglocal/fedora7-disk,xvda,w' ]

 

#

#  Hostname

#

name        = 'fedora7'


#
#  Networking
#
dhcp        = 'dhcp'
#vif         = [ 'type=ioemu, bridge=xenbr0' ]
vif         = [ '' ]

#
#  Behaviour
#
on_poweroff = 'destroy'
on_reboot   = 'restart'
on_crash    = 'restart'


serial = "pty"
localtime = 0
vcpus = 2


I tried something similar with RHEL5 and it worked, fedora7 is getting
stuck

> From xm console fedora7 
io scheduler noop registered

io scheduler anticipatory registered

io scheduler deadline registered

io scheduler cfq registered (default)

pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5

rtc: IRQ 8 is not free.

Non-volatile memory driver v1.2

Linux agpgart interface v0.101 (c) Dave Jones

RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 16384K size 4096 blocksize

input: Macintosh mouse button emulation as /class/input/input0

Xen virtual console successfully installed as xvc0

Event-channel device installed.

usbcore: registered new interface driver libusual

usbcore: registered new interface driver hiddev

usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid

drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.6:USB HID core driver

PNP: No PS/2 controller found. Probing ports directly.

i8042.c: No controller found.

mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice

TCP bic registered

Initializing XFRM netlink socket

NET: Registered protocol family 1

NET: Registered protocol family 17

XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/vbd/51712

XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/vif/0

Write protecting the kernel read-only data: 938k



I not sure what is mean to come after here for me to guess where it
might be getting stuck.  Can any one provide any hints or know what is
going wrong.  Maybe there is a mis match of the xen versions ???

Thanks
Alex

[Kaloyan Tenchov]

Hello,

You do not specify your exact problem with the installation.

Are you using the kernel and initrd from the images/xen/ directory of
the Fedora 7 installation tree? If so, most probably your guest is
running ok and the Anaconda loader has started and is waiting for
input on the guest's local console.

The local console is differrent from the serial console accessed by
"xm console" and it is a new feature in Xen 3.1 and Fedora 7.

The guests now have a "real" monitor which can be accessed remotely
by VNC. This VNC server is not the Anaconda VNC server for network
installation of Fedora that you are trying to start with the "vnc",
"vncpassword", and "vncconnect" kernel options. It is started by xend
on the Xen host.

Have a look at all vnc related configuration variables by issuing "xm
create --help_config".

Try to configure and connect to the guests's monitor and see if
Anaconda is running and waiting for some user input.

Have in mind that there are problems related to VNC network
installations of Fedora 7:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=243265



       
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[Tom Horsley]

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 03:34:22 -0700 (PDT)
Kaloyan Tenchov <zayfod(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote:

>  You do not specify your exact problem with the installation. 
Anaconda has started, but soon goes into a completely frozen
hung state using 100% cpu (according to the vm monitor on the dom0).
Everything is totally non-responsive. Even the little comet
orbiting the cursor in the console freezes up (along with the cursor).

It acts exactly like this bug:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=237895

except "random time" always happens before I can even get it
through an install :-).

The dom0 is running Xen in fedora core 6 (x86_64), I'm trying
to install an i386 guest fedora 7 (fully virtual).

I also have to use the noisapnp=1 kernel boot parameter to even
get this far, otherwise it hangs when booting the kernel to do
the install at the "scanning for isa pnp cards" step.

And, in addition to that, the fedora 7 kernel apparently doesn't
have (or can't find) a driver for the emulated cdrom, so I have
to do a network install rather than installing completely from the
DVD iso image.

I can work around most of these, but the freezing during install
is harder (though I've seen some folks using the livecd builder
to build images for xen guests, which might be an approach, but I
haven't looked at trying to figure that out yet).