[Xen-users] How to boot a VM using read-only disks

[Eric Tessler <maiden1134@xxxxxxxxx>]

I want to boot a VM that contains 2 disks: the main boot disk and a secondary disk.  However, I want the secondary disk to be read-only.  In my XEN VM configuration file, if I specify the secondary disk as read-only (using the "r" option) the VM fails to boot.  It looks like during boot the OS is trying to write to the secondary disk.  If I configure the secondary disk to be read-write in the XEN VM config file, the VM boots without any problems (the secondary disk is indeed read-only, however I also want to be able to boot it in that way, I don't want the OS writing to it).  Note that in my VM boot disk image (file backed), the fstab is updated correctly -with both disks specified and the secondary disk as read-only.

 

Here is how my disks are specified in the XEN VM config file for clarifiction:

 

disk=[ 'phy:/dev/loop0,/dev/hda1,w',
          'phy:/dev/loop1,/dev/hda2,r' ]

 

(both file backed disks are bound to loop devices)

 

Has anyone tried this before and got it working???

 

Eric

 

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