Re: [Xen-users] VNC console access in paravirtualized domUs

[Mike Lovell <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ray Barnes wrote:
> Hi all.  In my CentOS 5.1 domUs, I add the following to the config file:
>
> vfb = [ 'type=vnc,vnclisten=0.0.0.0,vncdisplay=1,vncpasswd=somepass' ]
>
> at which point console output will default to vnc (assuming I remove
> the "console=xvc0" argument from the kernel line in grub).  To enable
> interactive logon I'd just add another line into /etc/inittab for the
> vnc console.  On Debian Etch (2.6.18-4-xen-686) I'm trying to
> accomplish the same thing but without any success.  When I launch the
> domU and hit the VNC server, it simply says "parallel0 console" but
> does not output anything else.  I've tried poking around in /dev and
> it does not appear that the vfb gets a separate device as it would
> under CentOS.  Google is also not very helpful in this regard, the
> only thing remotely relevant (which doesn't solve my problem) is
> http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-users/2008-04/msg00686.html.
>  dom0 is Cent 5.1 with Xen 3.2.1 compiled from source.
>
> Any idea what I should be doing to get debian to work?  And on a
> related note, Ubuntu 7.10 appears to do what I want by default (I
> haven't tested it yet - I gather that from google), but is there
> anything I should know about for Ubuntu 7.04?
>
> -Ray
>   
I have seen this problem on a setup that I did with debian etch. 
Unfortunately, I didn't spend enough time with it to see if this is a 
solution since I didn't need a graphical console anyways.
Are you using the xen kernel that is available in the debian etch 
repositories? If so, that might be your problem. The kernel there 
(2.6.18-4-xen-686) is one that was build with xen 3.0.3 which did not 
have the vfb capabilities. The 3.0.4 release did. So the kernel doesn't 
have a way to do a graphical console. I would try building the linux 
kernel with the 3.2.0 patch set and using that for the domu. 
(http://bits.xensource.com/oss-xen/release/3.2.0/linux-2.6.18-xen-3.2.0.tar.gz). 
I started to try that on my set up but didn't have enough time to fully 
explore the possibility.
I might be completely off on this since I am definitely not a xen expert 
but it seems like a logical explanation.
Mike

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