Re: [Xen-devel] Installing Fedora Core 2 inside an unprivileged domain

[Ian Pratt <Ian.Pratt@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I am attempting to install Red Hat Fedora Core 2, inside an
> unprivileged Xen domain, using the FC2 distribution DVD.
> 
> Ian discusses some options for doing this in a message from 2004-11-07
> [ http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=9983779 ].
> I'm developing the "alternative approach" he discusses in the message.
> I've made some progress:

Thanks for giving this technique a go.
 
>   1. Create a sparse file (see section 5.2 of Xen user's manual):
> 
>        dd if=/dev/zero of=fc2-install.img bs=1k seek=8388607 count=1
> 
>   2. Acquire the DVD ISO image (FC2-i386-DVD.iso, in my case), and
>      save it to a file locally.  Mount the image as a loopback device,
>      copy the file "initrd.img" from the DVD image, unmount the image:
> 
>        mkdir /mnt/loop
>        mount -oloop,ro FC2-i386-DVD.iso /mnt/loop
>        cp /mnt/loop/isolinux/initrd.img .
>        umount /mnt/loop

I don't think the initrd is going to do you much good: any of the
modules it contains are going to be built for the wrong
kernel. The default xenU kernel probably has everything you need
anyway.

As I understand it, anaconda takes the place of /sbin/init in the
initrd. I suspect what's happening is that loading of the
modules is failing and anaconda isn't trying to proceed, even
though it probably could.

I've never tried it, but I wander if its possible to run anaconda
directly from an installed system? If so, running it under strace
might provide a useful clue as to what's going on.

>        disk    = [ 'file:/fc2-install/fc2-install.img,hda1,w',
>                    'file:/fc2-install/FC2-i386-DVD.iso,hdb1,r' ]

I don't suppose it will help, but it might be worth exporting the
DVD image as hdb rather than hdb1. If it's looking for an ISO
image it will look for the former.

It'll be a shame if we have to hack anaconda to make this work,
but armed with the strace it might be clearer how to trick it
into doing the right thing.  In the longer term, the "Stateless
Linux" project should add what we need to Fedora to make installs
easier.

Thanks,
Ian



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