Subject: Re: [Xen-users] boot existing OS

[John S Little <JSLittl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Creating a new domU from the beginning (pardon me if this is overkill for 
the question...).  This is a shortened quick document I wrote up for work. 
 Hopefully it will help.

Using a sles 9 machine:

1. Create and format a partition to hold your new domU say /dev/hdb4
2. Mount the partition somewhere.  Let's do it at /mnt/mydomu: mount 
/dev/hdb4 /mnt/mymydomu
3. Copy the partitions from the linux distro that you want (not sure about 
debian) into the mount point
>From the machine containing the distro:  rsync -azvu 
/{dev,var,etc,,usr,bin,sbin,lib,srv,boot} <dom0>:/mnt/mydomu 
4.  Back on dom0:  mkdir /mnt/mydomu{proc,sys,home,tmp,media,mnt}
5.  cd /mnt/mydomu/etc and edit HOSTNAME and hosts to a non duplicate 
machine that does exist on your network and fstab.
In fstab you define the drives that you want the domu to use just like you 
would if it was a real machine.  The biggest difference is that all of the 
files and directories will all be on the / partition.  The can be any 
normal drive the system will recognize such as /dev/sda1, /dev/hda1 etc. 

/dev/hdb1            /                    reiserfs   acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/hdb2            swap                 swap       pri=42 0 0

Be sure and make a note of what you set your / drive to (and swap if you 
use it).

Here is my real domu fstab file:

/dev/sda1            /                    reiserfs   acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/sda2            swap                 swap       pri=42 0 0
devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
proc                 /proc                proc       defaults 0 0
usbfs                /proc/bus/usb        usbfs      noauto 0 0
sysfs                /sys                 sysfs      noauto 0 0
/dev/cdrom           /media/cdrom         subfs 
fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0             /media/floppy        subfs 
fs=floppyfss,procuid,nodev,nosuid,sync 0 0


6. Unmount the drive containing your domu files:  umount /mnt/mydomu
7. cd to your xen configuration directory:  cd /etc/xen
8. Edit the config file for the domu
(this is shortened for purposes of this email)
disk = [ 'phy:dev/hdb4,hdb1,w',     #here hdb4 is the partition holding 
the domu files and directories (the one we had mounted to /mnt/domu, sda1 
is the disk I defined in the /mnt/mydomu/etc/fstab file
        'phy:dev/hdb?,hdb2,w' ]       #here sda? is whatever partition I 
want to use for swap, sda2 is the disk I defined in the 
/mnt/mydomu/etc/fstab file
root = "/dev/hdb1 ro"   #this is the sda1 referred to above which is also 
the / defined in the domu fstab file

Here is my real config for the drives:

disk = [ 'phy:system/jslittl-xen,sda1,w',
        'phy:system/jslittl-swap,sda2,w' ]
root = "/dev/sda1 ro"

If the rest of you config file is setup correctly you should be good to 
go.


HTH,

John Little
Hendricks Regional Health IS Department
317-718-4752
jslittl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.hendrickshospital.org




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